The Geologic Mystery of the Carolina Bays; The 500,000 Oval Shaped Depressions 

I would like to remind my audience that the Carolina Bays cannot be impact event related as each feature formed at a different time, some as much as 128,500 years apart. This would be impossible if they were created by an impact event (which they weren’t, hence why that hypothesis has long ago been thoroughly debunked). If they had been impact related, or related to multiple large impact events, you would expect 1 or less likely 2-3 dates that all point to the same time.

There are also "rainwater basins" in Nebraska, but are oriented to the northeast--pointing to the Saginaw Bay theoretical impact site.

tyvm for covering this topic I asked for multi times. You never fail to amaze this number 1 fan from 10k subs to now 272k subs!... Even tho it's not in your wheelhouse, you're amazing! ty for your time, energy and effort, much love from your lil ole disabled lady in central NC

I own land with Bays on it. The bays themselves have a sedimentary alluvial clay as their base . They are within a sand overlying sand deposit which makes up the local coastal plane. The area at the time of the last ice age was a "cold" desert. ie a hot desert has more windblown sand as the sand is heated by the sun and forms massive dunes. A cold desert whilst having winds , does not create as much movement of sand. Therefore the available sand from glacial runoff is limited and therefore can only form dunes in the shape of ovals a few tens of feet high moving sand over an immovable clay in the prevailing wind direction.

Thank you for the most plausible explanation for these formations. Especially since there are actual examples we can draw from on other locations planetwide.

According to that hypothesis, we should also see fewer of these former lakes the farther south since there would be less permafrost. Also I wonder if the direction if these lakes match up with current wind directions or how much that would have changed over the last dozen millennia.

My grandparents grew up in Elizabethtown NC and their families had lake houses on White Lake ( 1910’s-1940’s) so many stories of dances and hunting Alligators. I remember as a kid being able to see all the way to the bottom in the center of the lake.

North Carolinian here! Thank you for covering these structures. Your theory on how they formed is the best one I've heard so far. We also have an interesting phenomenon that occurs around the Carolina Beach, Wilmington and Cape Fear River mouth area commonly called Seneca Guns. It also occurs inland sometimes like around Raleigh and surrounding areas. I have experienced the loud explosive-like sound a couple of times and have yet to come across a reasonable explanation. I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

Nice! I was waiting for this video!

We have small tear drop shaped hills in Scotland which were formed during the last Ice-age which all point in the same direction of Glacial flow!

I teach geomorphology at a 300 level at UMD- there are some great images of current thermokarst lakes. We use the Carolina Bays for a lab every spring! There are some excellent aerial photos of current periglacial thermokarst lakes at the Coleville River Delta in AK- we use those for comparison :)

That makes a lot of sense if you think about the sinkholes forming in the Artic. Interesting. The meteor shower is more fun but there should be some evidence.

The dating of the structures is crucial. If they were formed by a ballistic debris curtain from an asteroid or comet impact, you'd expect the dates of the formations to be contemporaneous. Which doesn't appear to be the case.

I asked the History Channel, and they said they're actually the impact points of Atlantean plasma weaponry.

My homeland! I'm from Charleston, SC which is surprisingly at high risk of earthquake - love to see an episode on the 1886 Charleston Earthquake

Yay im so happy you covered this phenomena, very interesting take

Thank you for covering this topic! I learned about Carolina Bays a number of years ago, and have since had a fascination with them, so I enjoy anyone's take on it.

This is really interesting 🤔

Wow, got some debate here in the comments -- means it's a hotly debated geological topic! Love to see it. Thank you for the explanation and your insight. :)

Lots of good information

With experience of Michigan geography my first thought was kettles (holes left by glaciers), but kettles aren't uniformly shaped like this.

3:23 I was going to say that it kind of reminds of the water features in northern Canada

Really cool subject!

Thanks! It is also cool to know the origin of the numerous lakes of Manitoba and other areas with permafrost!

In the Netherlands there is a similar phenomenon like that of the Carolina Bays. It is called a Pingo and this was a depression in the ground that seems to have been a feature that formed during the Iceage of Northern Netherlands. Besides other features like ridges, the Pingo formed round depressions that were filled with ice that pushed the ground to the sides, causing a rim. When the ice melted, these pingo's became shallow lakes. Birds deposited the eggs of egg laying fish and amphibians that stuck to their feathers. The Pingo became a magnet to early hunter gatherers who left their stone tools on its shores. Most Pingo's were later filled in, but a few are still existing. Prehistorians and Geologists have reconstructed the workings of the Pingo. Another explanation is that pingo's were areas where early humans collected peat and left a depression in the ground that filled with water that froze in winter. Another explanation is that lighning struck in the peat, reeds and the vegetation which burned up the reeds and caused a depression. As a child I have seen this happening in reedfields close to my home. After the fire died down, there was a big black depression in the earth where previously dry reeds were standing. The depression was half a meter deep. Also in Siberia we see similar features in the permafrost. Now that the Permafrost is melting in Russia, many villages and towns that have build on permafrost, sink into the melting permafrost. So, all over the world we see this phenomenon of icy lakes melting. Another explanation may be the work of beavers who make lakes. Actually, in Finland there are thousands of lakes that also were formed in the last ice age by the movement of ice.

It is hard to imaging that area in permafrost. It is so hot and boggy down there. The pictures from Alaska are convincing. First good explanation I have heard.

Oh Wow , i am a born North Carolina native This is very close to where i live..... thanks for the Spotlight @GeologyHub

These occur on Marylands eastern shore and are known as whale wallows. Locals believe hundreds of whales swimming in a magnetically north direction were caught on what had been shallow continental shelf when sea levels dropped dramatically at the start of the ice ages. Most of these depressions have yielded million year old whale fossils found buried in the sediments .

Oh cool! I had no idea!

Thanks ! ! !

Finally. I had a heated discussion with someone else on RU-vid who claimed the impact hypothesis was the correct one. I completely agree with your explanation. It is the most plausible one to date.

Thanks for another great video! You might be interested in these two videos from TheGeoModels Channel (www.youtube.com/@TheGeoModels/videos). "What does a geologist say about the Carolina Bays?" and "Lidar reveals the ancient landforms that most Carolina Bays researchers won't show you"

I first heard of these just a few years back, I happened to be listening to this dude named Randall Carlson...I'm sure his theory has been mentioned somewhere here....about the bays being craters caused by ejecta from a very large meteor impact further North-East? That would explain the lack of extraterrestrial material... but not the varying dates of formation.... I take Randall with a grain of salt, but he's a good story teller. Your theory does make sense, though less spectacular...lol.

Can we have Mima Mounds next? Or if you've already done them, a link?

Thanks for this. Just get ready for incoming comments asking you to visit weirdo pseudo-science YT channels trying to tell us the Bays are extra-terrestrial in origin. I keep having to tell people that geologists have been studying these things for 100 years and have never once found evidence for meteor strikes.

I'm not sure if it's already been mentioned, but I doubt this explanation would produce formations with such regularity of shape and orientation.

Hey, question, how hard would it be to render your videos in 4k? Lot of 4k monitors and TVs out there these days.

I like the idea that asteroids at different times hit the glaciers and the chunked ice from the impact created the impressions.

Thanks for covering this one. There is obviously a lot of misconception on the topic out there currently.

GeoHub guy, I think you have the most likely explanation (you are correct because that is what I think, said a bit tongue-in-cheek). Sure, it would be a great story if the features were from ice splatter due to cosmic impact of glaciers, but dating and overlapping features do not seem consistent with that idea.

Thick salt deposits deep below? EDIT: Your theory makes a lot more sense :)

If you fly across Siberia you see all over the landscape the most circular traces of kryoturbation. Tha oval shape of the Carolina bays may have a tectonic cause when they were formed by ice, freezing and thawing over a long time.

This is very interesting as it's similar to the formations in Western Australia that are near an area called the Kau rocks nature reserve, they look more like ponds but as yet I have not seen any reference as to how they were formed.

The hypothesis by Antonio Zamora explains the mathematically precise elliptical nature or the bays. It also explains the orientation of the bays to a relatively small area. The variable nature of dating of emplacement makes more sense if the lips of the bays are considered to be overturned, as if by an impact. Does your theory offer these explanations? Does your theory cater for the bays found in other parts of North America, not close to historical permafrost emplacement? I appreciate your content and look forward to more on this fascinating topic. Kind regards.

lone pine earthquake in the late 1800’s! some eastern sierra videos would be awesome ;)

Could you create a new video about how the giant Stone Mountain, Georgia granite peak formed?

How do you accurately date these? You could get the age that some of the sediment under the surface last saw sunlight via luminescence dating, or get the age that some buried organic material was last alive, but that wouldn't tell you when the material was shaped into the ellipse. I may be misunderstanding the logic of how they're dated, could someone please explain how this is done?

Bought a book called “The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes” which goes into great detail about the Carolina Bays. There are some in Southeastern Ontario’s border with the USA. It’s a fascinating concept. 🇨🇦🖖🏻🇨🇦

This is an interesting hypothesis you've given for the formation of these features. It would be great to see field research, digging deeper so to speak, providing confirmation and an explanatuon for the orientation. 💜🌎🏞️✌️😎 Edit: autocorrect 🤦

More likely than not, the South Atlantic Coastal Plain did not average below freezing during even the coldest parts of the ice age. There is evidence of Tundra in Maryland and Virginia, but no further South. Temperatures likely averaged around 5C along the South Atlantic Coastal Plain.

Can you do a video on the finger lakes in upper NY? That's what this reminded me of.

Geologist here; I’ll tell you why I push back on your assertion that the bays “cannot” be the result of an extraterrestrial impact simply because of soils dating. I don’t put much stock into dating evidence alone; I’ll need other evidence against a hypothesis to consider it unlikely. The bigger issue is that you’ve missed some key properties of the bays that I think cannot be easily explained by any hypothesis that I’ve heard other than the (indirectly) extraterrestrial origin. First, the orientation of the bays. I have yet to find or hear about a permafrost or pseudokarst mechanism that produces depressions in the same orientation. I’ve heard hypotheses of predominant wind being the factor, but that remains unconvincing until i can see it in action in some other place. You claim that the permafrost explains these, but again, I have yet to see a permafrost environment where every single ice wedge is 1: an ellipse and 2: oriented in the same way. Second, the existence of carolina bays in Nebraska, oriented NE-SW instead of NW-SE. The existence of identical bays in a different, but locally similar, orientation, and 1,500 miles from the other bays, is hard to explain via permafrost. Sure, it may have happened that way, but where’s the modern day permafrost environment which produces elliptical depressions along almost the same orientation? Third, the shapes and overlap. Virtually all carolina bays, from florida to new york to nebraska, are elliptical in shape. Permafrost can create circular or elliptical looking depressions, but from the mapped permafrost environments Ive seen, they’re not anywhere near as close as the carolina bays. There has to be some mechanism by which the permafrost environment can create conical sections. Additionally, ice wedges, from my understanding, don’t really overlap. So why do we see so many overlapping carolina bays? And bays within bays? There needs to be a mechanism for developing overlapping depressions via permafrost that i have yet to hear postulated. All these properties, locations, existence of consistent orientation and match with conical sections can be explained via an extraterrestrial impact. The most convincing hypothesis to me thus far is that a comet hit the Laurentide ice sheet around Saginaw Bay, Michigan (where the orientations of bays on the east coast and Nebraska generally join). When it hit, it threw blocks of ice in a ballistic trajectory in 360 degrees. As the ice struck, they would remove cones of sediment from the ground, angled toward the impact site. As these impact locations were filled in over minutes, days, years, as the plane cutting a cone at an angle is an ellipse, so would the impact zones be. Ice projectiles from the Laurentide ice sheet would explain the lack of extraterrestrial material found in or around the bays. The singular impact, as well as the ballistic trajectory of projectiles, helps to explain the shape and orientations. Obviously, we don’t know if this is true or not, but the fact that so many properties of these features can’t easily be explained by other known phenomena, but can be explained via secondary ice impacts caused by an extraterrestrial impact on an ice sheet, makes me consider the impact hypothesis the most plausible, even with the soil dating not agreeing (at this time).

If you have ever seen an impact area for artillery or bombs or have looked at the bomb crater patterns of WWII, you would see a striking resemblance to the patterns of the Carolina Bays and the Nebraska Rain Water Basins. Also, the orientation of all of these ovoid depressions are towards the Saginaw Bay area and to the west of there. An asteroid bombardment of the Lorentide ice sheet to me seems the more likely event or events, possibly during different time periods.

Thanks.

i was thinking about these yesterday o_O

Please explain the inverted stratigraphy of the raised rims of the Carolina Bays. Thanks.

I lived near Lake Waccamaw for a couple years. Visited White Lake also. They're really nice lakes in a very hot and muggy place! Good explanation!

I was wondering about sink holes? What is the bedrock below?

So kind of the same reason you mentioned about why Canada landscape has so many depressions in it now when looking via satellite? What is off though is why would it form in such a curve pattern around the coast...could it be that long ago the shoreline was that further inland and simple old sand dunes the ocean formed?

How do you explain their orientation changing as they progress north? The orientations all point to an area near Saginaw Bay. A meteor or comet colliding with the ice sheet, and the ice falling back to earth is more plausible, imo. It would allow for the changing mean orientations and also explain the rainwater basins in Nebraska, which also orient toward Michigan. The ice melted, leaving a shallow depression and some water.

I learned something new

Yeah, I don't know.

Thank your for using “hypotheses” rather than the misued “theories.”

I think this is happening in Alaska, melting thermafrost, land then homes sinking. Thanks for the info.

I prefer the meteor strike on the ice sheet hypothesis. Ejected ice from the impact made these oblong impact craters. The ice would have melted after impact, so no remnants of meteor or ground from the initial impact site. The long axis of the ovals points back to a spot in SE Michigan if one takes coriolis effects into account. The permafrost method has the issue that these interact with each other more like meteor craters than lakes from melting permafrost. Edit: Don't know why I typed SW instead of SE. Also these are relatively slow speed impacts, unlike meteors that are high speed. So you don't get the shock explosion that circularizes the crater.

Vedry intedresting 🤔 Thank you GH

In Siberia, huge holes apear where gas come up out of the thawing ground.

Briefly skimmed the comments - didn't see any mention of it so here goes. I hadn't heard of this site, being from New Zealand, but as someone who focuses primarily on tectonic-volcanic interactions a few things stood out to me immediately. First, the site you looked at in North Carolina immediately stuck out to me as a depression. I went on google earth and built some quick elevation profiles, and the features all lie within a pretty clear graben structure with a significant bounding fault running NW to SE on the southern side of the rift structure. All of the "depressions" within align well with the axis of this rift structure. Having no other information or back ground in the region, it screams rift related, volcanic field of basaltic crators. The only bit of evidence you presented which is hard to explain under this model is the shallow depths of the crators. Additionally - and I could be wrong because I do not have a background in this region, but I didn't think there was volcanism in this part of the United States during the time frame that the dating provided. Very interesting video though, I enjoy your theory!

AFAIK, the 'best explanation' is actually an impact that caused a large amount of ice to be thrown up (glacier) and then to fall back to earth. There are videos on youtube that show how the angles of the Carolina bays all line up & point to an apparent impact (Canada?, Michigan? [don't recall]). The clencher is there are a other 'bays' that cover a similar arc on the west down towards the south, as an impact (coming from over the North Pole) would also have thrown up ice in that direction, too. Since the some of the dating aligns w/ the glacier covering most of North America that means ice, blasted up & falling back, would have made the Carolina bays as they are also in an arc from the south towards the east.

Talk more about the iceage. What came first , the iceage or the Grand Canyon

Has anyone else heard they were named BAYS because only bay trees grew around their edges?

There's a layer dated at the end of clovis that has microspherules that are impact proxies and the radial pattern along with the youngest date on the bays being the same its likely secondary impacts from ice projectiles blasted from the mile+ of ice it landed on.

While it being a meteor strike is literally impossible, how cold does earth have to get before you get permafrost in Florida?

I agree they look to be permafrost caused, but wow I am surprised that far south and close to the ocean was permafrost. I assumed a cold dry climate but above freezing for long enough not to create permafrost, so I leaned something new. So the ice shelf over the North Atlantic must have been quite large beyond the shoreline creating an land bridge to Europe.

They have them in Florida

Secondary ejecta from comet hitting the glaciers in the great lakes area formed these.

The impact to the Laurentide Ice Sheet makes, by far the most sense. Unfortunately, many cling to earlier assumptions about the formation and will not consider new information that gets in the way of their narrow view. Sad.

Think about what this would mean. South Georgia at one point in human history had permafrost. Most years it doesn't even snow there

But what about the inverted stratigraphy found as well as widespread shocked quartz in core samples in the Carolina Bays?

The permafrost hypothesis does not account for the inverted stratigraphy that has been observed in some of the rims. The trails on the rim of Meteor Crater show inverted stratigraphy.

Antonio Zamora has written 3 books on this subject and has a wonderful RU-vid channel that explores the mystery in detail.

Ming the merciless did it with a meteor attack.

What an intelligent and cogent interpretation.

Antonio Zamora has thoroughly and correctly explained these Carolina Bays, and related Nebraska Rainwater Basins. His thorough scientific explanations are here on RU-vid, and he's also written a peer reviewed paper on the subject.

The Randall Carlson theory is the rocks hit the ice sheets with such force it launched ice blocks so high they proceeded to rain down across the country. Don't they also all line up with the deepest part of the great lakes which couldn't have been created from the ice sheets based on its depth?

Thermokarsts is an interesting hypothesis, but I don't think you have adequately shown the Pleistocene conditions to be sufficient to explain the "bays." There are similar features in Nebraska, with a different average orientation.

I disagree with the prevailing wind hypothesis to explain orientation.

Asteroid strike, the Saginaw Bay in Michigan.

This hypothesis does not account for why they are perfect ellipses all the same ratio of length/width, and overlap each other. No other collections of thermokarst lakes on the planet that I've seen are elliptical in shape, nor consistent in length/width, nor overlapping. (If you've got lat/long of elliptical lakes/bays anywhere else, please share!)

Interesting.....

any methane deposits around that time in combination?

@GeologyHub We're all waiting for you to post examples of perfectly elliptical geological features backing up your claims. Thanks.

There are bays in storm alley also. Hence “Nebraska rainwater basins” have been known for decades. There were no glaciers this far south. Thermokarst lakes are NEVER elliptical.

o7 2pm not 3pm im liking this new thing

Sort-of like inverted Drumlins... Feasible. Nature has its Ways -- which are not always apparent to Human sensibilities. Pat, simplistic explanations rarely serve Cause, down here at the living, Human end of the Effect. The only question one might have could well be: Why so many in such close proximity? Human Sciences suffer from a bias, which often fits the explanation to what we think we know. Science is, by its nature, pedantic: one step at a time -- confined to a Generational time frame (step?) approximating 75 years. That's Life. Someday, there may (or may not) be a definitive answer. For this Time Being, the effort alone "works"; in a limited sense. In the mean of a more definitive explanation, I am contented with what such explanations say about Time and the (very) Human inclination to know. So many mysteries. So little time. In the final analysis, focused speculation is all we have.

You forgot to mention the Nebraska rain water basins. They are northeast to southwest and not lined up with the prevailing wind. The bays and basins all line up pointing towards the great lakes region. they are also eliptical shaped while karst lakes tend to be football shaped or oddball shaped. You are wrong on this one buddy.

They are in Nebraska. They all point to one source. This was ejecta from an impact.

The wate table dropped during the glacial period. Many aquifers lost pressure during that time.

Loess Hills, I thought they were named after someone, Loess is a geologic action, and is vast.

Antonio Zamora has spent his life on this subject. He is THE EXPERT on these. I agree with his work. These bays are also in Georgia, Texas, Nebraska, Iowa, etc. They are not oval, yet mathematically calculable ellipses most pointing towards the Great Lakes. It’s time to pull our head out of our asses. A 10 year old can look at a map with azimuth lines included and see that something hit near the Great Lakes, striking the almost 2 mile thick ice sheet and sending boulders of ice in a perfect circumstance. Watch his videos and you will understand. Edit: Ark, not circumstance