This page links to several presentations about the Carolina Bays. Numerous theories have been proposed regarding their origin. The most widely accepted explanations involve uniformitarian processes, such as lakes formed on thawing permafrost or kettle lakes created by melting ice boulders left behind by receding glaciers, later shaped by wind action.
More recent hypotheses suggest that the Carolina Bays were formed by oblique secondary impacts of glacier ice fragments ejected during an extraterrestrial impact on the Laurentide Ice Sheet at the Younger Dryas Boundary, approximately 12,900 years ago. This impact-origin theory is supported by the bays' mathematically elliptical geometry, raised rims, which are features characteristic of impact craters, and their radial orientation toward a convergence point near the Great Lakes. Furthermore, geological evidence indicates that North Carolina and South Carolina did not experience permafrost conditions, even during the Last Glacial Maximum. Therefore, the formation of the bays cannot be attributed to ice-melt processes.
The bibliography contains a list of the books and publications used as references in the presentations.
Bibliography for the Carolina Bays - References used in the presentations.
