Terrestrial Evidence of a Nuclear Catastrophe in Paleoindian Times

Mammoth Trumpet ^ | March 2001 | Firestone/Topping

[Renfield]

I made a cursory internet search for South African oriented lakes, and from what little I was able to read, these are deflation basins...wind-sculpted.

"...I don't have a cable-modem, so Google Earth is out for me. FWIW, I took this as a strawman. Where there's a will, there's a way?..."

Google Earth specifically states that users need high-bandwidth connections, which I don't have at home. We wanted to load google earth on our work computers, but were forbidden to do so. Those were my only options. I'd love to have it, but can't at the moment.

"...Rather than sending me to some group of amateurs... Tacky. Just tacky. Not to diminish the pros, but you would agree that "amateurs" have made significant contributions in various disciplines over the years? I have come to a "trust by verify" mode from the scientific community. Inherent problems with that approach should be obvious for a layman...."

Peer-reviewed journals exist in order to weed out wild speculation. There is nothing "tacky" about insisting upon the use of credible sources.

"...Just one other point re the elevations(~5,000') some of these bays/oriented lakes are found and associated marine sediments. Tectonic forces have raised areas that were previously near or even under water? Is there any other explanation for this anomoly?..."

I don't know which bays/oriented lakes you refer to here, but tectonism affects every place in some way or another. A geologist sent me an abstract on Friday concerning some work he's been doing in our area, which suggested (among other things) that this area (Southern Maryland) had been uplifted ~40 meters in the last 37,000 years (mostly, he thinks, due to forebulge during the Wisconsinian glacial maximum). 5000 feet, however, is quite a bit of uplift to have occurred during the relatively short interval of the Quaternary period.

"....Have to run again, but will check back this afternoon...."

Please see if you can review this paper:

Daniels, R. B. and E. E. Gamble. Relations Between Stratigraphy, Geomorphology and Soils in Coastal Plain Areas of Southeastern U.S.A. Geoderma, 21 (1978) pp. 41-65.

This will help acquaint you with coastal plain stratigraphy. Geoderma is an arcane and outrageously expensive journal; you'll probably have to go to the library of the agronomy department at your nearest land-grant university to find it.

[Renfield]

I just learned that you can order a reprint of that Daniels and Gamble paper here:

http://soils.usda.gov/contact/nssc/

[Fred Nerks]

ping for you and bookmark for me...

[ForGod'sSake]

I don't know which bays/oriented lakes you refer to here...

The "oriented" lakes in South Africa at ~5000'. I also didn't mean to imply(although it may have looked like it) there were marine sediments associated with these particular formations, but more generally about marine sediments found at great elevations in other parts of the world. Most, but not all of these sediments are really old; the Alps, Himalayas, etc.

...but tectonism affects every place in some way or another. A geologist sent me an abstract on Friday concerning some work he's been doing in our area, which suggested (among other things) that this area (Southern Maryland) had been uplifted ~40 meters in the last 37,000 years (mostly, he thinks, due to forebulge during the Wisconsinian glacial maximum).

I ran across an article in my searches reaching a similar conclusion.

Please see if you can review this paper:

I doubt I'll go quite that far, but I did run across this from HERE:

S  T  R  A  T  I  G  R  A  P  H  Y

Legend
	Q -	Quaternary formations      fluvial and estuarine, silt, sand, and clay
	Tbc -	Bacons Castle Formation      fluvial-deltaic and tidal, gravel, sand, and clay
	Ty -	Yorktown Formation      marine, fossiliferous sand
	Te -	Eastover Formation      marine, sand and clay
	Tb -	Bon Air Gravel      fluvial, gravelly sand, silt, and clay
	Tex -	Exmore Breccia
	TK -	Older Tertiary and Cretaceous formations      marine and deltaic, sand and clay

 

There is nothing to indicate distances and the time periods aren't much help either. If you could maybe flesh it in a little???

FGS

[Gondring]

ALL YOUR BAYS ARE BELONG TO US.

SOMEONE SET UP MI THE BOMB!!!

[Gondring]

ping

[baynut]

Renfield, my copy of the map you suggested purchasing has arrived:

"James P. Owens' "Geologic Map of the Cape Fear Region, 1 degree x 2 degree quadrangle, and Northern Half of the Georgetown 1 degree x 2 degree quadrangle, North Carolina and South Carolina"

It didn't take long to locate a Carolina bay on the "Wando Formation," which you have said do not exist.

Here it is outside Southport, North Carolina:
http://local.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=33.931379~-78.035223&style=h&lvl=15&scene=3396068

Cursory review also suggests that arrangement of bays according to their location on terraces, your "stairstep" analogy in Post #119, is not apparent.

"The largest Bays, generally, are geographically nearest the toe of the landward scarp, and average bay size decreases seaward on the terrace...."

This stands to reason because, if it such an observation were valid, such an arrangement would have been apparent to any of the many students of bays through the years and been part of the literature.

I will continue to study the map -- but the statement regarding no bays on Wando is dead wrong unless my eyes deceive me.

[ForGod'sSake]

I will continue to study the map -- but the statement regarding no bays on Wando is dead wrong unless my eyes deceive me.

Well, it looks like one, maybe two bays in that particular frame. I have spent a couple of hours trying to find information on this Wando formation without much luck. Lot's of references to this formation without much in the way of something the layman could use......like how big it is; how far inland, etc. Would appreciate some help with that.

HERE is another frame just up the coast near the Sunny Point Military Ocean Terminal that shows several more "bays". Whether or not they are in the "Wando" is a mystery to me.

Something else strikes me and that is, the bays further southwest, and just west of what appears to be the Founders Club at St James(golf club???), while not parallel with the southern coastline, are far from perpindicular to the coast. That in itself doesn't necessarily negate Renfields arguments, since I can't tell the "lay of the land" from the satellite pics. BUT, they have the same orientation as the rest of the bays.

Thanks for following up on this. I hand intended to get back to this "project" but other things always seem to pop up.

[Renfield]

You won't see this arrangement on a map of that scale. You need 7 1/2 minute topo quadrangles, and aerial photos at a scale of 1:24,000.

[Renfield]

They may not be perpendicular to the current coast, but remember, long ago, the sea level was higher, and the coastline was different than it is today.

[Don'tMessWithTexas]

All of this is Bush's fault!

[Renfield]

By the way, that map you have is generalized. It's not sufficiently accurate at the scale of the photo you show, to know which geologic formation is present. I work with those maps every day, and while in the field, find small areas of various formations not shown on the maps, every time I go out.

I worked on the ground on that formation for years in South Carolina, and I can't remember any bays on it in the counties where I worked. Based on my own experience, I'd suspect that the area you show is probably a small remnant of an older formation. Determinations like that are best made in the field.

[Renfield]

Here's a view of a couple of well-respected USGS geologists, concerning dating of bays vs bay rims:

Markewich, H. W., and William Markewich. 1994. An Overview of Pleistocene and Holocene Inland Dunes in Georgia and the Carolinas--Morphology, Distribution, Age, and Paleoclimate U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin #2069.

p. 25. While studying the Pleistocene fluvial and marine stratigraphy of the Cape Fear River valley, Markewich and Soller (1983) and Soller (1988) suggested that Carolina bays formed between 60 ka and 200 ka, thus supporting Frey's (1951) estimate of 100 ka for Singletary Lake, a large bay in the Cape Fear River valley. Soller (1988) considered it probable that some of the older dunes [poster's note: the authors are referring here to large, amorphous or dune-and-kettle type dunes on the northeastern terraces of coastal blackwater streams, not to bay rims] were formed contemporaneously with the Carolina bays, and that the younger dunes [poster's note: these "younger dunes" include bay rims] greatly postdated the bays, and that some dunes were as young as 5 ka.

This dune dating makes sense to me. While working in Marlboro County, SC, I found an Indian artifact about 3 feet down in one of those "younger dunes" along the Great Pee Dee River, which allowed me to date the dune to around 4500 BC.

[Renfield]

Oops, "dune-and-kettle" should have read, "knob-and-kettle". Sorry for the typo.

[ForGod'sSake]

They may not be perpendicular to the current coast, but remember, long ago, the sea level was higher, and the coastline was different than it is today.

Understood, hence my caveat. BTW, could you help any with the Wando formation? Does it generally follow the present coastline? How far inland, etc? And, so I don't have to spend hours looking, again, how does it fit in with the age of the bays, etc?

[ForGod'sSake]

Probably, but keep it under your hat.

[ForGod'sSake]

You won't see this arrangement on a map of that scale.

Missed this earlier. Did you recommend he/we purchase a map that will not serve the purpose or has baynut used the map for something other than what you had in mind?

[Renfield]

The Wando extends inland pretty far...I worked on it in Darlington and Marlboro Counties in South Carolina (among other areas), probably 100 miles inland, for example.

Here's a zoomed-out graphic of a geology map of the carolinas.

http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/projects/geoweb/participants/dutch/GRAPHIC0/StateGeolMaps/NC-SC1kp.gif

Notice the formation in pale yellow, notated as Qp. "Qp" stands for "Quaternary--Pleistocene". The Wando is a smaller subset of what is shown as Qp. (Older members of the Qp, not separated out on this map, exhibit Carolina Bays.) If you were to view a more detailed map, you would see fingers of it (the Wando) extending well inland along rivers that drain from the Piedmont, in areas that are now low fluviomarine terraces, but which were estuaries when the sediments of that formation were being laid down.

Go to this map:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2004/1013/figures/fig4.html

and look in the upper left for the town of Cheraw. The Wando extends as a low terrace along the Great Pee Dee River almost up to Cheraw...it stops about 5 or 6 air-miles downriver of the town. Also notice the Orangeburg, Mechanicsville, and Surry scarps, which are shown as (broken) line symbols on this map. Look east, to the area between the Cape Fear and South Rivers in North Carolina, and down toward the Waccamaw River in South Carolina. Notice the location of largest bays (Lake Waccamaw, White Lake, Black Lake, Little Singletary Lake)in relation to the geologic formations shown on James P. Owen's 1989 geologic map of the area. Those huge bays are on an area that was a major estuary early in the Pleistocene, which was subsequently infilled during succeeding marine transgressions. This isn't coincidental...it's more evidence that Carolina bays are hydrologic, and not celestial, in nature.

The Sediments of the Wando were laid down approximately 70,000 years ago, according to Owens, and would have been exposed by marine regression some time after that (~60 ka?) That suggests that bays are older than the age of the Wando's exposure, i.e., older than 60,000 years...which is what Markewich and Stoller also propose.

Also: here's a geology map of Georgia...

http://home.att.net/~cochrans/geomap01.htm

The thing to notice is the "Fall Line", i.e., where the piedmont ends and the coastal plain begins. The bays in Georgia point directly away from it.

[Renfield]

"...Missed this earlier. Did you recommend he/we purchase a map that will not serve the purpose or has baynut used the map for something other than what you had in mind?..."

I recommended purchase of this map to show generalized stratigraphy of the region. This document is a two-part map, and includes x-sectional diagrams of the formations along transects. It's a great map.

[ForGod'sSake]

On top of everything else, I'm color blind ;^) I'll have to get back to the rest of your reply later this evening, but there's one thing I want to try and clarify.

If the Wando was laid down(by marine sediment???) ~70,000 years ago, how is it possible it's not presently underwater? From an earlier post:

As you can see, based on this crude chart, sea levels ~70,000 years ago were ~150' below current sea levels. IOW, the Wando should be part of the continental shelf now. A little help?