Talk:Carolina bays

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Untitled[edit]

I have merged what I could from Carolina bays, maybe more than I should have -- it was pretty strangely written -- feel free to prune. Mwanner 14:50, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Some of the material added turns out to be from a UGA site that I have now added to the external links. Might count as fair use, but I'll try to re-write. Mwanner 20:53, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

I have changed the number of bays to 10-20,000 based on [1] Mwanner 21:17, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't "alignment around a northeast-southeast trend" be NW-SE? That's what the picture seems to suggest.

I shortened the following passage quite a bit as I think it is not appropriate to give "unpublished research" more space than published findings:

Although the origin of the Carolina Bays has been a topic of considerable controversy, unpublished research by Andrew H. Ivester (University of West Georgia), Mark J. Brooks (University of South Carolina), Barbara E. Taylor (University of Georgia), and their colleagues using Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) Dating, ground penetrating radar, sediment cores, and other techniques has had better success with the question of their approximate age. As a result of studies of Carolina Bays in South Carolina involving detailed analysis of their stratigraphy and OSL dating of their rim deposits, they concluded that Carolina Bays are between 70,000 and 100,000 years old. For example, according to OSL dates the age of Flamingo Bay in South Carolina is about 108,700±10,900 BP and the age of adjacent Bay-40 is about 77,900±7,600 BP. Further south, another Carolina Bay, Big Bay, was found to be over 74,000 years old. Thus, as collaborated by the presence of alternating layers of sediments containing glacial and interstadial pollen found filling individual Carolina Bays, Carolina Bays are ancient landforms whose origin predate the end of the last glacial epoch by several tens of thousands of years to possibly over 100,000 years. Furthermore, the OSL dates indicate that the formation of the Carolina Bays was not an instantaneous event, but rather individual bays were formed at different times over a period of about 30,000 years. Any hypothesis of their formation will need to consider not only their age but also explain why Carolina Bays formed over a period of tens of thousands of years.

Andrew H. Ivester and his colleagues also concluded from their research that the original morphology, orientation and shape, of the Carolina Bays has been completely destroyed by tens of thousands of years of modification by wind during dry periods and lake waves and currents during wet periods. As a result, it is likely impossible to use the modern orientation and shape of these bays as criteria for understanding the origin of these landforms. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cd12dc (talkcontribs) 13:37, August 25, 2007 (UTC)

OSL and Pollen Research Has Indeed Been Published[edit]

Cd12dc wrote above:

"I think it is not appropriate to give "unpublished research" more space than published findings."

Contrary to what Mr. Cd12dc incorrectly states above, The research of Ivester and others has been published not only as abstracts at scientific meetings like the abstract by Firestone that is cited in this Wikipedia article, but also as scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. The problem is that someone needs to add the appropriate citations to the text. This published research includes:

Brooks, M. J., Taylor, B. E., and Grant, J. A., 1996, Carolina Bay geoarchaeology and Holocene landscape evolution on the upper coastal plain of South Carolina. Geoarchaeology. vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 481-504.

Brooks, M. J., Taylor, B. E., Stone, P. A., and Gardner, L. R., 2001, Pleistocene encroachment of the Wateree River sand sheet into Big Bay on the Middle Coastal Plain of South Carolina. Southeastern Geology. vol. 40, pp. 241-257.

Grant, J. A., Brooks, M. J., and Taylor, B. E., 1998, New constraints on the evolution of Carolina Bays from ground-penetrating radar. Geomoprholpogy. vol. 22, no. 3-4, pp. 325-345.

Ivester, A. H., Godfrey-Smith, D. I., Brooks, M. J., and Taylor B. E., 2002, Carolina Bays and inland dunes of the South Atlantic Coastal Plain yield new evidence for regional paleoclimate. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. vol. 34, no. 6, p. 273.

Ivester, A.H., Godfrey-Smith, D. I., Brooks, M. J., and Taylor, B. E., 2003, Concentric sand rims document the evolution of a Carolina bay in the Middle Coastal Plain of South Carolina. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. vol. 35, no. 6, pp. 169.

Ivester, A. H., Godfrey-Smith, D. I., Brooks, M. J., and Taylor B. E., 2004a, The timing of Carolina Bay and inland activity on the Atlantic coastal plain of Georgia and South Carolina. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. vol. 36, no. 5, p. 69.

Ivester, A. H., Godfrey-Smith, D. I., Brooks, M. J., and Taylor B. E., 2004b, Chronology of Carolina bay sand rims and inland dunes on the Atlantic Coastal Plain, USA. The 3rd New World Luminescence Dating Workshop. July 4 - 7, 2004, Department of Earth Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, p. 23.

Ivester, H. A., M. J. Brooks, and B. E. Taylor, 2006, Stop 3. Carolina Bays of the South Atlantic coastal plain as exemplified by Big Pond, Applin County Georgia. In pp.79-104, T. M. Chowns, ed., Quaternary Stratigraphy and Depositional Environments; Jekyll Island and the Golden Isles Parkway, Guidebooks, vol. 26, no. 1, Georgia Geological Society University of West Georgia, Carrollton, Georgia.

Ivester, H. A., M. J. Brooks, and B. E. Taylor, 2007, Sedimentology and age of Carolina Bay rims. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. vol. 39, No. 2, p. 5.

In addition, the exact correlation of the orientation of Carolina Bays with Pleistocene paleowind directions is based upon paleowind directions reconstructed from the orientation of Pleistocene sand dunes and other empirical physical evidence independent of any sort of computer modeling. Discussion of the paleowind directions reconstructed solely on the basis of empirical physical evidence can be found in a number of peer-reviewed publications, which include:

Carver, R. E., and G. A. Brook, 1989, Late Pleistocene paleowind directions, Atlantic Coastal Plain, U.S.A. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. vol. 74, no. 3-4, pp. 205-216.

Ivester, A. H., and D. S. Leigh, 2003, Riverine dunes on the Coastal Plain of Georgia, USA. Geomorphology, vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 289-311.

Ivester, A. H., and D. S. Leigh, 2006, Riverine dunes on the coastal plains Georgia, U.S.A. In pages 31-54, Timothy M. Chowns, ed., Quaternary Stratigraphy and Depositional Environments; Jekyll Island and the Golden Isles Parkway, Guidebooks, vol. 26, no. 1, Georgia Geological Society University of West Georgia, Carrollton, Georgia.

Ivester A. H., Leigh D. S., and Godfrey-Smith D. I. 2001. Chronology of inland eolian dunes on the coastal plain of Georgia, USA: Quaternary Research. vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 293-302.

Markewich, H. W., and W. Markewich, 1994, An overview of Pleistocene and Holocene inland dunes in Georgia and the Carolinas; morphology, distribution, age, and paleoclimate. United States Geological Survey Bulletin no. 206932 pp.

Wells G. L., 1992, The aeolian landscape of North America from the Late Pleistocene. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Also, paleoenvironment records recovered from Carolina Bays, descriptions of the cores from which they came, radiocarbon dates from these cores, and the sedimentology and stratigraphy of the sediments containing them demonstrate beyond any shadow of a doubt that the pollen, other fossils, and radiocarbon dates used to construct these paleoenvironmental record are 1, from undisturbed sediments, which occupy the basins, which comprise individual Carolina Bays, 2. have **not** been disturbed by any sort of impact processes, and, thus, 3. **postdate** their formation. The empirical data and observations presented in the peer-reviewed papers, which are given below, clearly show that many of the Carolina Bays, from which paleoenvironmental records have been collected predate, sometimes by tens of thousands of years, beyond the limit of radiocarbon dating, the terminal Pleistocene event hypotheiszied by Firestone and others. Even if the Carolina Bays are impact craters of some sort, they clearly far too old to be related to any terminal Pleistocene event. Some of the peer-reviewed papers, which contain this evidence are:

Bliley, Daniel J., and Burney, David A., 1988, Late Pleistocene climatic factors in the genesis of a Carolina Bay. Southeastern Geology. vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 83-101.

Brooks, M. J., Taylor, B. E., and Grant, J. A., 1996, Carolina Bay geoarchaeology and Holocene landscape evolution on the upper coastal plain of South Carolina. Geoarchaeology. vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 481-504.

Frey, David G., 1953, Regional aspects of the late-glacial and post-glacial pollen succession of southeastern North Carolina. Ecological Monographs. vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 289-313.

Frey, David G., 1955, A time revision of the Pleistocene pollen chronology of southeastern North Carolina. Ecology. vol. 36. no. 4, pp. 762-763.

Ingram, Roy l., Robinson, Maryanne, and Odum, Howard T. , 1959, Clay mineralogy of some Carolina Bay sediments. Southeastern Geology. vol. 1, pp. 1-10.

Watts , W. A., 1980, Late-Quaternary vegetation history at White Pond on the inner coastal plain of South Carolina. Quaternary Research. vol. 13, no. 2, pp.187-199.

Whitehead, D. R., 1964, Fossil pine pollen and full-glacial vegetation in southeastern North Carolina. Ecology. vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 767-777.

Whitehead, D. R., 1967, Studies of full-glacial vegetation and climate in the southeastern United States. in E. J. Cushing and H. E. Wright, Jr., eds, pp. 237-248. Quaternary Paleoecology. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.

Whitehead, Donald R., 1981, Late-Pleistocene vegetational changes in northeastern North Carolina. Ecological Monographs. vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 451-471.

Citations to other similar pollen records can be found in:

Bryant, Vaughn M., Jr., and Holloway, Richard G., 1985, Pollen Records of Late-Quaternary North American Sediments. American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists, Dallas, Texas.

The range of radiocarbon dates from the sediments of Carolina Bays from some Of these publications is illustrated in an article, “An Evaluation of the Geological Evidence Presented By Gateway to Atlantis for Terminal Pleistocene Catastrophe” at:

http://www.hallofmaat.com/lostciv/an-evaluation-of-the-geological-evidence-presented-by-gateway-to-atlantis-for-terminal-pleistocene-catastrophe/

The figure can be found on that page.

Paul H.

Sea Level Changes[edit]

The following citation from the section entitled "Age" needs to be revised:

"During glacial periods when sea level was 3000 meters below present, the water table would have been below the bottom of the vast majority of the bays."

Three thousand meters is 9842.5 feet. I really don't believe that the Atlantic Ocean dropped that much during the last glacial period.

Jbaker314 00:39, 8 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Carolina Bays Comet impact[edit]

The paragraph beginning "The cometary theory" is incorrect. It conflates informed opinion from the 1940s with the recent Laurentide cometary impact given in Firestone et. al. PNAS vol 104 # 41, p. 16016 ff.

This gives the 12,900 date, but does not suggest that the Bays are the result of that event. Rather, they state that the areas they sampled contain remains from the 12,900 event, which would be expected if the Bays were pre-existing features. They give no discussion of the geology which could suggest a creation date for the Bays sampled.

Would someone restore the previous version of the paragraph, which gave a slightly different date, and then add a paragraph saying something to the effect that the presumed impact in 12,900 left evidence in several Bays, but that there was no evidence that it created them. And reference the Firestone paper, which is open access.

Thank you.

John Roth —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.23.85.122 (talk) 18:15, 13 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are two separate issues. One is the age of the bays and the second is their origin. That they are over a 100,000 years old does not preclude them from being of some sort of impact origin. It just means they are not connected with the alleged terminal Pleistocene event.Paul H. (talk) 04:15, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"White Sand" as Evidence of Impact[edit]

One current paragraph reads:

It has been argued that large areas of white sand are due to an immense amount of heat baking the iron, SiO2Fe -> SiO2 + Fe. According to this argument, "baking" of the sand by the impacts literally "burns" the iron straight out and redeposits it into the sand. Instead of being a set of a compound, you have pure sand and iron, which go to FeO later as iron oxide. It is argued that the iron is redeposited as magnetic iron oxides in undisturbed sand dunes near all the Carolina Bays.

The above argument for the "white sand" being evidence of an impact the result is a completely scientifically bankrupt one, which comes from Firestone's book. The idea that iron can be either burnt or baked out of sand and redeposited by high temperatures is physically impossible. What will happen is that initially high temperatures will bake iron (oxides) onto the sand and eventually fuse it on the sand at high enough temperatures. Ultimately, if the temperature gets high enough, the sand will melt and the iron will mixed into the glass formed by the melting sand. The "SiO2Fe -> SiO2 + Fe" equation is total nonsense when it comes to what heat does to iron oxides in soils because that just does not happen when sand containing iron is baked.

The fact of the matter is that decent soil science textbook, even decent USDA soil surveys, will demonstrate that the "white sand", which is being discussed above is what is called an E-Horizon from which the iron has been leached out by chemical processes that occur normally in sandy soils. In addition, an examination specific soil surveys will show that the so-called "white sand" occurs throughout the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coastal plains and is completely unrelated to the distribution of Carolina Bays. The "white sand" should be removed as evidence of impact because it is totally unrelated to any impact processes. I suspect the "white sand" is not mentioned in the PNAS paper because, someone pointed it out to Firestone how silly it is to use it as evidence of an impact. Some web pages to look at are 1. E horizon and 2. Master Horizons.Paul H. (talk) 04:55, 31 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments on "Perfectly" Concentric Rims[edit]

On May, 31, 2008, Mr. 24.106.179.86 edited the text of part of the Carolina Bay article to read:

On the basis of 45 OSL dates from and sedimentological analyses of rims of Carolina Bays in Georgia and South Carolina, Ivester et al. (GSA poster, 2007) concluded that a single Carolina bay was actively modified between 12,000 to 50,000 BP; 60,000 to 80,000 BP; and 120,000 to 140,000 BP. These data, however, would suggest that the prevailing winds in these paleo-times were perfectly consistent across the ages. In fact, Ivestor proposes that a single bay was modified over a 150K time period, in multiple "generations," each resulting in a rim perfectly concentric with the last. This would require the prevailing winds over this time to have remained almost perfectly constant.

There are major errors in this paragraph. First, the statement, "In fact, Ivestor proposes that a single bay was modified over a 150K time period, in multiple "generations," each resulting in a rim perfectly concentric with the last." is false. Ivester et al. (2007) states nothing about the "concentric rims" of the Carolina Bays, which he studied, being "perfectly concentric." That the concentric rims of the Carolina Bays examined by Ivester et al. (2007) are "perfectly concentric" is nothing more than a false assumption made by Mr. 24.106.179.86. For example, among the Carolina Bays, whose rims were dated by Ivester et al. (2004, 2007), is Big Bay in Sumter County, South Carolina. A detailed examination of Big Bay's rims using available aerial photography clearly demonstrates that its rims both pinch and swell and truncate each other. They area clearly not "perfectly concentric" as is claimed to be in the above quoted text. If a person was to examine any of the other Carolina Bays examined by Dr. Ivester, they would find that they are also not as "perfectly concentric" is they are claimed to be.

One mystery, which the above text fails to address is how either impacting meteorites, shock waves, or any of the other proposed impact-related mechanisms can explain the nestling of individual Carolina Bays with rims "perfectly concentric with the last." Regardless of whether the rims were formed tens of thousands of years apart as indicated by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating or minutes / seconds apart, it is highly improbable that either a "train" of meteorite / comet fragments, shock waves, or other impact related phenomena would follow each other in exactly the same path to create the nested rims seen in some Carolina Bays. The highly chaotic and turbulent nature of such a catastrophic impact event and the widely variable aerodynamics of either any impactor fragments, shock waves, or any other impact phenomena would prevent this. In it also unexplained why the paleowind directions derived by Craver and Brooks (1989) from Carolina Bay orientations are virtually identical to those they derived from orientation of relict Late Quaternary parabolic dunes, which Ivester et al. (2004, 2007) argues to be contemporaneous on the basis of OSL dating.

In the same manner that the "perfection" of the nesting of the concentric rims is exaggerated, the proponents of an impact theory for the origin of Carolina Bays falsely exaggerate the "perfection" of orientation of the Carolina Bays. As demonstrated from published research, individual Carolina Bays are not "perfectly aligned" as they are often claim to be. As discussed and illustrated in Johnson (1942), Kacrovowski (1977), and Carver and Brooks (1989), the orientation of the long axes of Carolina Bays varies by 10 to 15 degrees in any one area. Maps, found in Kacrovowski (1977) and Rasmussen et al. (1955), of Carolina Bays show that within Delmarva Peninsula, the long axes of Carolina Bays become, at best, distinctly bimodal with greatly divergent directions and, at worst, completely random and lacking any preferred direction.

Another error in the text quoted above is that paleowind indicators, i.e. relict sand dunes, and paleoclimatic computer models generally indicate that for the southern and central Atlantic coastal plain, the prevailing winds were consistent in direction throughout the last interglacial-glacial-interglacial cycle (Carver and Brooks 1989, Markewich and Markewich 1994). Relict, Quaternary sand dunes, which have been dated to the same time periods as the modification of the Carolina Bays, all exhibit the same orientation. They prove that the prevailing winds blew in relatively the same direction during the periods of times that Ivester et al. (2007) concluded that the Carolina Bays were modified. Thus, the relatively consistent orientation of the long axes of the Carolina Bays within a 10 to 15 degrees range completely fails to invalidate the conclusions of Ivester et al. (2007).

One notable exception to the consistency of prevailing Late Quaternary wind directions according to paleoclimatic models and relict sand dunes is the northern Atlantic coastal plain, i.e. the Delmarva Peninsula. It is revealing that this region where the prevailing winds would have varied greatly through the last interglacial-glacial-interglacial cycle is the same region where the orientation of the long axes of individual Carolina Bays vary significantly from each other.Paul H. (talk) 03:47, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

References

Carver, R. E., and G. A. Brooks, 1989, Late Pleistocene paleowind directions, Atlantic Coastal Plain, U.S.A. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. v. 74, no. 3-4, pp. 205-216.

Ivester, A. H., D. I. Godfrey-Smith, M. J. Brooks, and B. E. Taylor, 2004, The timing of Carolina Bay and inland activity on the Atlantic coastal plain of Georgia and South Carolina. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. v. 36, no. 5, p. 69.

Ivester, A. H., M. J. Brooks, B. E. Taylor, 2007, Sedimentology and ages of Carolina Bay sand rims. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. v. 39, no. 2, p. 5.

Johnson, D. W., 1942. The Origin of the Carolina Bays. New York: Columbia University Press.

Kaczorowski, R. T., 1977, The Carolina Bays: a Comparison with Modern Oriented Lakes Technical Report no. 13-CRD, Coastal research Division, Department of Geology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina. 124 pp.

Markewich, H. W., and W. Markewich, 1994, An overview of Pleistocene and Holocene inland dunes in Georgia and the Carolinas; morphology, distribution, age, and paleoclimate. Bulletin no. 206, United States Geological Survey, Reston, Virginia, 932 pp.

Rasmussen, W. C., and T. H. Slaughter, 1955, The ground water resources, in The water resources of Somerset, Wicomico, and Worcester Counties. Bulletin no. 16, Maryland Geological Survey, Baltimore, Maryland, 170 pp.

debunking of impact theory[edit]

I will remove the text about current/growing credibility of the impact theory. The Impact Field Studies Group's Impact Database lists the Carolina bays as a scientifically-disproven impact theory. (See the impact database at http://impacts.rajmon.cz/IDdata.html ) The entry in IFSG's Impact Database has the following info:

Several hundred thousand eliptical depressions on coastal plains of eastern USA with long axis oriented mostly NW-SE and diameters ranging from a few hundred meters to 9 km, typically 1-4 km. A large number of hypotheses have been developed to explain their origin including meteorite impacts. Kaczorowski (1977) showed that the morphology of these depressions is too shallow for an impact structure. Seismic data and rocks show no structural disturbance; magnetic anomalies exist near some of the depressions and not at others; the magnetic anomalies are offset from the depressions and if an iron meteorite was responsible for them, the meteorite would have to be buried many hundreds to a couple kilometers deep and would have to be 165-500 m in diameter. Drilling at at least one magnetic anomaly found no iron. No meteorite fragments were ever found. Basal lake sediment C14 ages at various lakes range from 6 ka to 50 ka (references in Kaczorowski, 1977). Luminescence dating by Ivester et al. (2002, 2003, 2004a, and 2004b) indicates that the depressions formed between 70,000 to 120,000 years ago. Numerous websites can be found on the internet discussing the depressions. Extensive literature overview can be found in, e.g., Kaczorowski (1977) and Ross (1987).

References:

  • http://www.westga.edu/~aivester/pr01.htm
  • Ivester, A. H., Godfrey-Smith, D. I., Brooks, M. J., and Taylor B. E., 2002, Carolina Bays and inland dunes of the South Atlantic Coastal Plain yield new evidence for regional paleoclimate. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. vol. 34, no. 6, p. 273.
  • Ivester, A.H., Godfrey-Smith, D. I., Brooks, M. J., and Taylor, B. E., 2003, Concentric sand rims document the evolution of a Carolina bay in the Middle Coastal Plain of South Carolina. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. vol. 35, no. 6, pp. 169.
  • Ivester, A. H., Godfrey-Smith, D. I., Brooks, M. J., and Taylor B. E., 2004a, The timing of Carolina Bay and inland activity on the Atlantic coastal plain of Georgia and South Carolina. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. vol. 36, no. 5, p. 69.
  • Ivester, A. H., Godfrey-Smith, D. I., Brooks, M. J., and Taylor B. E., 2004b, Chronology of Carolina bay sand rims and inland dunes on the Atlantic Coastal Plain, USA. The 3rd New World Luminescence Dating Workshop. July 4 - 7, 2004, Department of Earth Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, p. 23.
  • May, James H., and Warne, Andrews G., 1999, Hydrogeologic and Chemical Factors Required for the Development of Carolina Bays Along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico Coastal Plain, USA. Environmental Engineering and Geoscience. vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 261-270.
  • Kaczorowski R. T. (1977) The Carolina Bays: A Comparison with Modern Oriented Lakes. Technical Report 13-CRD, pp. 124. Coastal Research Director, Department of Geology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.
  • Ross T. E. (1987) A comprehensive bibliography of the Carolina Bays literature. The Journal of the Elisha Mitchell Scientific Society 103(1):28-42. http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/cbaybib.html

§ While both primary and secondary impact events are easily dismissed due to many factors reviewed above, a recent proposal implicating a distal ejecta blanket of fluidized pulverized rock (sand) is not constrained by the physics of "impact". --Cintos (talk) 16:15, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Contrary to the Cintos, who is the primary person advocating this idea, his claim that a "distal ejecta blanket of fluidized pulverized rock (sand) is not constrained by the physics of "impact"." is completely false. In fact what is currently known about impact dynamics completely discredits his ideas about the sediments and pedogenic biomantle in which the Carolina Bays have developed being of impact origin. In fact, the published research about the soils and geology of the surficial sediments in which the Carolina Bays are developed only discredits any ideas that they are a blanket of impact ejecta. In addition, the "The Saginaw Impact Manifold," the alleged source of this imaginary ejecta blanket is a completely fictional impact crater. What what I have found, there is a complete lack of any credible support among Earth scientists and astronomers, who are experts in impact dynamics and structures, for Cintos' ideas. If anything, such ideas are regarded to be fringe theories being promoted by only a few people. Given that Young Earth creationists (YEC) have published abstracts of their YEC research in the transactions of Geological Society of America (GSA) meetings, his GSA abstracts are meaningless as validation of his ideas. Paul H. (talk) 20:47, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Conflict of Interest And Cintos Edits[edit]

Recent changes, such as the addition of links to Geological Society of America meeting abstracts to the Carolina Bay article, indicates that the promoting of original research, Conflict of interest, is likely a major issue with Cintos' edits. Paul H. (talk) 20:57, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Adding to TALK here as a note to reviewers to avoid an Original Content objection. The “Davias” hypothesis now appears in a peer reviewed GSA Special Papers Book SPE552, as Chapter 23 (Harris) and Chapter 24 (Davias & Harris). I honestly thought that was noted in the Wiki page last fall but is no longer present. Chapter 23 presents a toolkit for suborbital ejecta modeling and was positively reviewed by Walter Alvarez, who did similar work when he was struggling to advance a silly iridium-based impact theory. Chapter 24 outlines a hypothesis based on observations and informed speculation that can be challenged by all, but the GSA felt the observations and logic was sound enough to at least be discussed while giving the hypothesis 30 pages of ink. Cintos (talk) 01:40, 28 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The "GSA Special Papers Book SPE552" chapter which is mentioned above is still a primary source that lacks the reviews by the secondary sources needed for the evaluation of its notability for its inclusion into Wikipedia. It might be published, but it so far lacks the citations that demonstrate its significance.
In addition, if a person looks at Cintos's contributions, it is quite apparent that this is a single-purpose account used only to promote the "“Davias” hypothesis." Paul H. (talk) 14:52, 30 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Please review the template I placed on your talk page. You have a conflict of interest here. Please leave the notability determination of the research you are involved with to uninvolved editors. Pushing this hard for your(?) work to be included will lead to a ban if you can't be reasoned with. --Licks-rocks (talk) 20:56, 30 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Licks-rocks I thought you meant Paul H at first, I see now you are talking about Cintos. I agree. Doug Weller talk 08:29, 31 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Cintos Response[edit]

I respect your insistence that my GSA and AGU papers represent OR, as it indeed is original research. I was not aware that this page was being edited by a PhD who had the origin of the Carolina bays firmly in hand. Please alert me when the peer-reviewed paper is published. I just hope you have more than 47 fuzzy OSL dates. Wikipedia is a wonderful tool, and I'm glad that talk documents just what and why edits are made. My hypothesis of a distal ejecta blanket has not found a wide receptive audience in the scientific community, but it is growing and they are listening (four invited oral presentations and three posters @ GSA & AGU in the last 12 months). On the other hand, my survey of 27,000 bays using thousands of LiDAR elevations maps I generated and integrated into Google Earth should be of interest to the Wikipedia reader community, unless someone here is afraid of making those striking images of the robust platforms available for public access. That might be subversive because the LiDAR imagery disputes the common orthodoxy that bay shapes are inconsistent and that their orientations are chaotic. A picture is worth a thousand words, and the bays are crisply defined and rotate clockwise systematically from New Jersey to Alabama Cintos (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 03:58, 18 December 2011 (UTC). We shall not attempt to express our particular speculations on the public page in the future, but I will rebut the most cynical comments here in talk. I protest the parroting of the OSL dates as solid proof of bay evolution dates. Ivester has abstracts for posters which delcare THREE SINGLE sample OSL dates which are scattered across the 70kya to 100+kya range, and suddenly it is taken as fact. The editors should examine those dates and locations and similarly note they are speculations until published and discussed in a peer reviewed journal. Two of the three were taken in adjacent sand dunes, and all his dates are in the surficial sediments. The structural bay rims are down 1 or 2 meters and covered with reworked surfaces. Our speculation of a 40 - 45 kya date is not disproven by such sketchy data using a temperamental measuring stick. I also defend the sand as being enigmatic. The white sand sheet - 10 meters thick in some locations - is seen from NJ to AL, which is the range of the bays. In several locations it is mined and used directly as feed stock to glass manufacturing plants; it is 99% pure quartz, displaying no lamina, no channeling, virtually no felspar or heavy metals, no carbonates, no interspersed organics, and is highly skewed. Those properties deny a wind-blown provenance, and simultaneously deny a marine or fluvial one. Read the papers; excuses are commonly made to explain the perplexing provenance. It is just "there", and so long as the orthodoxy refuses to consider a catastrophic delivery mechanism, it won't be considered and properly tested. --Cintos (talk) 04:18, 20 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

If a person looks at the published literature, which is cited in the article, they will find the above paragraph makes false and unsubstantiated claims about the OSL dates mentioned in the article. First, contrary to the false claims made in the above paragraph, these OSL dates are cited in peer-reviewed journals and publications, of which some are cited in the article. Finally, the characterization of dates as "fuzzy," “speculation,” and “sketchy data using a temperamental measuring stick” lacks any scientific basis. If a person looks at the published literature about the Carolina Bays and the adjacent sand deposits, a person will find the vast and overwhelming majority of geologists, geomorphologists, and archaeologists, who study Carolina Bays all accept the OSL dates as valid indicators of their age as seen in peer-reviewed publications and have not found any reason to question them. The only reason for the author of the above paragraph has to reject these OSL dates is because they completely contradict the “catastrophic delivery mechanism” proposed by him. Cintos certainly has not published any detailed papers in the peer-reviewed literature that can be cited according Wikipedia standards that provide valid reasons for the rejection of OSL dates.
According to the peer-reviewed scientific literature, there is nothing at all enigmatic about this ill-named “white sand sheet” as argued above. Contrary to the erroneous claims made above about these sands “displaying no lamina, no channeling,” the published literature clearly documents the presence of sedimentary structures, layering, and even channels within the so-called “white sand sheet” that demonstrated these sands to be deeply weathered coastal plain sediments of marine, fluvial, and eolian origin. The quartzose nature of these sands; their low feldspar content; and lack of carbonate and interspersed organics are all completely explained, as discussed in the peer-reviewed literature, by deep weathering of sediments over thousands of years. Their heavy metal content is meaningless in terms of the origin of these sands. The upper meter or more of these sands are massive because they are part of biomantle developed in these sands. The fact of the matter, there is more than enough published data and observations to test and completely refute a “catastrophic delivery mechanism” for these sands.
Because there is nothing perplexing about these sands and the proposed ”catastrophic delivery mechanism” lacks any validity according to what is known about the physics governing impacts, conventional geologists and geomorphologists overwhelmingly disregard a catastrophic origin for these sands. A person need only contact the geologists, who work at the state geological surveys in the states from Alabama to New Jersey to find that the ideas about these sands being impact ejecta lack any acceptance at all among local geologists and are regarded by them as fringe and unsubstantiated. The lack of interest by the geological “orthodoxy” has nothing to with a bias towards a “catastrophic delivery mechanism.” Their lack of interest is based upon the theory’s utter ignorance of what is known about the geology of the Atlantic coastal plain, a scientifically illiterate understanding of impact dynamics, and a completely imaginary impact crater in Michigan.Paul H. (talk) 15:34, 26 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
In any case, Cintos appears to be a personal blog featuring Michael Davias' personal theories. His ideas might be more suited to an Immanuel Velikovsky type article (if he was sufficiently notable). Keith McClary (talk) 18:44, 8 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

carolina bays and northern alaska aligned lakes[edit]

has anyone worked on the relationship and obvious similarity of the carolina bays to aligned lakes in northern coastal alaska? i've often wondered about this both geomorphically and from a sociology of science perspective. compare for example the bays to a brief look using google earth at lat 75.5 lon -152. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pmchaffie (talkcontribs) 13:37, 13 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Melosh [1] characterizes the Carolina Bays as thermokarst or thaw lakes that are often aligned with the prevailing wind. There is a comparison of the aligned lakes in Alaska and the Carolina Bays in the following web page: Interpreting Carolina Bays as Glacier Ice impacts. The thermokarst lakes are not elliptical, they do not have raised rims and they are not aligned to radiate from a common point. The termokarst hypothesis does not explain why the Carolina Bays on the east coast and the bays found in the Midwestern states (Nebraska and Kansas) all radiate from the Great Lakes region. The elliptical bays can be interpreted as conic sections of slanted conical cavities created by oblique impacts on unconsolidated ground which became shallower through viscous relaxation. Sciencebookworm (talk) 15:05, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A few comments need to be made. First, no mainstream scientist at this time argues them to be thaw lakes. As a result, the fact Carolina bays are certainly not thaw lakes lacks any importance.

Second, the claim that Carolina bays radiate from the Chippewa Basin of Lake Michigan is nothing more than wishful thinking because they and the Nebraska rainwater bays do not cluster at the exactly the same location. The general center of the any sort ill-defined cluster that a person might argue exists is not in the Chippewa Basin of Lake Michigan but much further to the west in Wisconsin where there is a complete absence of any indication of a crater.

Third, the crater claimed to be associated with the Chippewa Basin in Lake Michigan as mentioned in the web page cited above is a completely fictional extraterrestrial crater. Contrary to the claims made by Firestone et al. (2006), the United States Geological Survey (USGS) seismic of Foster and Colman (1991) does not show any terrace faulting typical of an extraterrestrial impact. What is seen in the one illustrated seismic line is jointing and not faulting. In addition, there are other seismic lines, which are ignored by Firestone et al. (2006), that cross the Chippewa Basin of Lake Michigan that completely lack any indication of even jointing, much less faulting or terraces. Also, Firestone et al. (2006) completely ignores data from cores and other seismic lines that demonstrate both a lack of any sort of impact ejecta surrounding the crater and the existence of undisturbed glacial tills that predate the Younger Dryas within the Chippewa Basin. The claim that the Chippewa Basin is an impact crater is an imaginary crater based on the gross misinterpretation of one seismic line and a profound and remarkable disregard of a large amount of existing published data that completely refute this claim.

Finally, there are number of published papers and reports about the paleoenvironments, geomorphology, and geoarchaeology of Carolina bays that clearly show they are older than 60,000 and 140,000 years. It is quite impossible for 12,900 BP event to have created landforms that are in some cases more than 100,000 years older than it is. For a summary, see Figure 10 of Harris et al. (in press) and look at Brook et al. (2010). Also, look at An Evaluation of the Geological Evidence Presented By Gateway to Atlantis for Terminal Pleistocene Catastrophe at the Hall of Maat. If they are the product of an extraterrestrial impact, they are clearly tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand years older than the Younger Dryas. A person would also need to explain how they could have formed multiple times in the same location with similar alignments.

References cited;

Brooks, M. J., B. E. Taylor, and A. H. Ivester, 2010, Carolina bays: time capsules of culture and climate change. Southeastern Archaeology. vol. 29, pp. 146–163.

Firestone, R., A. West, and S. Warwick-Smith, 2006, The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture. Bear and Company, Rochester, New York.

Foster, D. S., and S. M. Colman, 1991, Preliminary interpretation of the high-resolution seismic stratigraphy beneath Lake Michigan. Open-File Report no. 91-21. United States Geological Survey, Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Harris, M. C., L. R. Sautter, K. L. Johnson, K. E. Luciano, G. R. Sedberry, E. E. Wright, and A. N.S. Siuda, in press, Continental shelf landscapes of the southeastern United States since the last interglacial. Geomophology. Available online 1 March 2013. Paul H. (talk) 16:16, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ 2011, Planetary Surface Processes, Cambridge University Press, p. 462.

Reference format[edit]

I've formatted some bare url links using ref tags. The bulk of the article uses simple Harvard referencing - so perhaps I should redo. However, it seems the refs could be redone with either ref tags or the rather cumbersome sfn format for greater ease of use. Thoughts? Vsmith (talk) 15:36, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you are quite right, the Harvard referencing needs to be converted to reference tags. It is something that I have meaning to do, but have been procastigating on doing. Paul H. (talk) 16:05, 7 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Capitalizing[edit]

Shouldn't the article be "Carolina bay" instead of "Carolina Bay?" The latter makes it sound more like a place name. 68.156.95.34 (talk) 07:46, 18 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yup -- done. Vsmith (talk) 13:40, 18 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Obscure References[edit]

The following reference appears to be a GSA presentation, with only an abstract extant on the GSA website: https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2002AM/finalprogram/abstract_45547.htm

Ivester, A. H., D.I. Godfrey-Smith, M. J. Brooks, and B. E. Taylor, 2002, Carolina Bays and inland dunes of the South Atlantic Coastal Plain yield new evidence for regional paleoclimate. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. v. 34, no. 6, p. 273.

If it is a valid paper that we can access, please could we have a better reference. If not, could all references to it be deleted. Tatelyle (talk) 17:57, 6 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That has been taken care of. I have added a of more recent summary papers to the article. By the way, the Journal of Cosmology is not regarded to be a reliable source of scientific information as far as wikipedia is concerned. Paul H. (talk) 15:42, 7 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Actually the whole article needs desperately to be redone to fix formatting of citations, remove duplicate sources, add recently published peer-reviewed summary papers and publications, and other stuff. Paul H. (talk) 16:00, 7 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
See our article on the Journal of Cosmology. But I suspect Tatelyle will disagree. Doug Weller talk 16:05, 7 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Paul H, you have still not provided any references to a paper by Ivester, only two links to conference abstracts. [1][2] As you said to me recently:

The best that I can find is that all of Davias' and colleagues publications have been either self-published material or conference abstracts that have not been peer-reviewed. For example, at similar Geological Society of America annual and section meetings, Young Earth creationists have been able to published the results of their research.

You cannot have one rule for Davias and another for Ivester. Either you post verifiable papers or books for the OSL dating sections by Ivester, or I shall delete them. Actually, I would like to read Ivester's paper, as I want to know how he OSL dated Bay rims that have no stratigraphy. If he dated the Bay floor that is probably an incorrect methodology, because the Bay floor may not have been disturbed. The dunes dating is more reasonable as I presume they display stratigraphy and the grains were on the surface long enough to be reset. But if the grains were buried quickly then the dating is probably invalid, but I cannot tell because there is no paper to read.
First, there is more than OSL dating for the Carolina Bays, e.g. in situ pollen biostratigraphy and radiocarbon dates from the bay fills and in situ Clovis artifacts buried in the Bay rims that completely refute a Younger Dryas impact association. These are all discussed in the article and various peer-reviewed papers. In case this case, Mr. or Mrs. Tatelyle (and Dr. Firestone in his book, which by the way is not peer-reviewed and was published by a publisher of New Age and fringe pseudoscience) is indulging in advocacy for a Younger Dryas association by dismissing and ignoring out of hand observations and interpretations that fatally contradict his or her beliefs. Contrary to what is mistakenly claimed, there are peer-reviewed papers and sources that explain the OSL dating which are cited in the article and which Mr. or Mrs. Tatelyle can consult for answers his questions. I will see if can find some online sources for a few. (Of course this will take a little time as I have other things to do then revised Wikipedia articles.) Given that the rims of some Carolina Bays, e.g. Flamingo Bay, have stratified archaeological sites that include in situ Clovis and possible Pre-Clovis artifacts in them, they are definitely older than the any hypothesized Younger Dryas event. By the way the OSL dates from these sites are consistent with the age of any associated archaeology which provides an independent validation of the OSL dating.
Finally, I will remove the abstracts and replace them with peer-reviewed sources. It will take several days as I am not getting paid revise Wikipedia articles. Some people have others things to do with their life in addition to revising Wikipedia articles. Mr. or Mrs. Tatelyle needs to be patient as such things take time and have more pressing matters than revising Wikipedia articles taking up my time. I am not getting paid to do this and and, thus, lack any boss who can demand that I must work on this to the exclusion of everything else in my life. Paul H. (talk) 22:27, 7 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As to your deletion of Professor Firestone's theory, I think this is bordering on advocacy rather than balance. Firestone is a well respected scientist and if this material had been in a book you would have accepted it, but because it was a journal you do not approve of you delete it. Are you really being fair-minded here, or do you wish to hide the fact that the Carolina Bays populations appear to triangulate onto common source locations? I note that there is no mention of the Nabraska and Kansas Bays, which makes this triangulation situation very clear, and no map either. And the 'impact' section omits all mention of coriolis, when any competent scientist would have immediately adjusted for this effect, and so the 'orientation' section contains a completely incorrect assertion about the triangualtion location. And there is no mention of impact drift either. So the entire page is defective, in not giving the reader sufficient information to form a balanced opinion on the likely method of Bay formation. Why is that? Tatelyle (talk) 19:42, 7 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I am concerned, your area the person indulging in advocacy as your the one 1. using self-published web pages, 2 non-peer reviewed abstracts, 3. a book published without any peer review by a publisher of fringe pseudoscience, and 4. refusing to acknowledge any evidence that contradicts your personal beliefs about the Carolina Bays. An example of the latter is in case of the Rainwater Bays in which both the age of the well-dated loess layers and associated well-dated paleosols that bury the original surface of the Rainwater Bays demonstrate that they are older than 27,000 BP and older than any hypothesized Younger Dryas impact. In addition, these observations also demonstrate the Rainwater Bays are clearly of a different age then a number of Carolina Bays, which are older than 27,000 BP according to radiocarbon dates from and palynology of the sediments filling the bays. This all makes the so-called triangulation an utterly meaningless and pseudoscientific exercise because it incorrectly assumes that all of these bays of the same age, which they are not. Similarly, the best that I can tell, the Coriolis argument is quite lacking in any understanding of the science associated with it to point of being be quite embarrassing. It is such bad pseudoscience, I suspect that it is one of the reasons professional scientists completely disregard Davias' ideas. Unfortunately, it would be original research on my part to explain why in an Wikipedia article. However, omitting the Coriolis argument saves the person, who proposed it a lot of embarrassment. Its scientific bankruptcy also might explain why it has yet to be published in a peer reviewed journal and has been relegated to the realm of self-published web pages and unreview abstracts as, in my opinion, any competent scientist realizes that the Coriolis argument is pseudoscientific technobabble.
Dr. Firestone is a well respected scientist. However, that does not mean he is both inerrant and infallible in all matters of science. From what I can see in his book, he is extremely ill-informed in his lack of understanding of Quaternary geology, impact mechanics, and archaeology. This is likely why only a publisher of fringe pseudoscience would publish his book. In terms of nuclear physics, I am a functional illiterate. That is OK as people cannot be experts in everything.
As I have stated before, I will revise the article and take care of those abstracts as well. It is all going to take time. I thank you for pointing out the problematical sources. They will be taken care in due time. Paul H. (talk) 22:27, 7 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, the triangulation and Coriolis arguments are missing from this article because, as far I have found, they have yet to be published in venues that for the puroposes of Wikipedia would be considred a reliable, verifiable, nonfringe source and be considered acceptable by Wikipedia. That is the fault and obligation of Davias, not me, if he wants his ideas mentioned in Wikipedia. Similarly, I cannot publish my personal ideas and research into his and Firestone's ideas in Wikipedia either because it would violate the rules about original research. Far from making me an advocate, it prevents me from doing so. I am retstricted by what I cannot do as much as what Davais cannot do in Wikipedia. Paul H. (talk) 23:41, 7 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]


Advocacy or editing?[edit]

Why did you remove Richard Firestone's peer reviewed paper on carbon dating the Carolina Bays? Is it because you do not like the results he obtained? That is not for you to decide, so I have put that section back in.

PaulH01-That was an honest mistake on my part, for which I apologize. There is no need for you to violate Wikipedia rules of civility by assuming the worst and making ad hominem attacks about me being engaged in advocacy for an honest mistake. You need to noticed that I have realized this mistake and have left that section in both articles with further revisions that I have made. Paul H. (talk) 03:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Quote:- radiocarbon dates from the bay fills and in situ Clovis artifacts buried in the Bay rims that completely refute a Younger Dryas impact association.

Advocacy again - and that information is not even in the Carolina Bay article.
Firestone's results (the information that you removed) refute much of the C14 dating. He demonstrated that there is serious contamination of the carbon in the Bays, which may have come from the Younger Dryas C14 spike. Which is why he found some carbon dating from 700 years IN THE FUTURE. And if the Bays are impact sites, you are bound to find Clovis items in the Bay rims. These are disturbed and transported artifacts, and are to be expected.
PaulH01-Given that I have at least one peer-reviewed paper, which will be added in the near future, that supports my statement and, thus, it is not advocacy as you incorrectly claim it to be. In this case and some other comments that you edited out about another editor, you are assuming the worst as you do above. The fact that they are part of a stratified site argues against even refutes the type of mixing that you alleged might happen. The trained archaeologists, who excavated one site, regarded the Clovis archaeology as being in situ. Can you provide me any specific reasons for questioning them? How do you know that the archaeologists are wrong without reading the paper? One of these papers is:
PaulH01-Moore; Christopher R., Brooks, Mark J., Kimball, Larry R., Newman, Margaret E., Kooyman, Brian P, 2016, Early Hunter-Gatherer Tool Use and Animal Exploitation: Protein and Microwear Evidence from the Central Savannah River Valley, American Antiquity. vol. 81, no. 1, pp. 132 - 147.
PaulH01-Given that a radiocarbon spike, an increase in C14, would make radiocarbon dates younger instead of older, it is impossible to explain many of the radiocarbon dates, e.g. the greater then 45,000 BP date from a paleosol within the sedimentary fill of a Carolina Bay. A radiocarbon spike cannot explain the OSL dates and certainly cannot explain the pollen data that collaborates many of the radiocarbon dates. The radiocarbon spike cannot be used to dismiss out of hand all of the radiocarbon dates that demonlish the the idea that the Carolina Bays are all contemporaneous with the start of the Younger Dryas. Paul H. (talk) 03:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Quote:- Dr. Firestone in his book, which by the way is not peer-reviewed.

99.99% of the books quoted in Wiki are not peer reviewed, are you going to delete those too? You do realise that Wiki is not a science journal, and not everything has to be peer-reviewed? And since the academic establishment will not review the YD-Bay impact theory, are you surprised that Firestone's second paper was in a lesser journal? And that Davias has not been reviewed? This is a self-fulfilling argument.
PaulH01-Not all books are formally peer-reviewed. However, any reputable book publisher will exert some sort of quality control on what they are publishing.
PaulH01-The book that he coauthored, The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes, was published by Inner Traditions (Bear Company), which is the same book company that publishes books that includes books such as The Slow Down Diet by Marc David; The Healing Intelligence of Essential Oils: The Science of Advanced Aromatherapy by Kurt Schnaubelt; Gobekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods by Andrew Collins; The Council of Light: Divine Transmissions for Manifesting the Deepest Desires of the Soul by Danielle Rama Hoffman; and There Were Giants Upon the Earth by Zecharia Sitchin. The fact the company, which published The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes, publishes books authored by Zecharia Sitchin and Andrew Collins indicates to me that they lack any quality control of any sort in what they publish.
PaulH01-How do you know that academic establishment will not review the YD-Bay impact theory? How do you know that papers were submitted and simply have been rejected because they have been lacking in substance? What proof do you have that there is a conspiracy that is preventing either you or Davias from submitting your paper for peer-review? Unless, you can show some proof, this is all claim is pure speculation and imagining non-existent conspiracies on your part. Paul H. (talk) 03:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Quote:- there are peer-reviewed papers and sources that explain the OSL dating

Then why are they not quoted in the article? This is not supposed to be science by telepathy. The article gives no valid proof that the Carolina Bays are older than the YD, and the article specifically ignores and deleted Firestone's evidence that the Bays may have been influenced by the YD C14 spike. That is not how an encyclopaedia is supposed to work.
PaulH01-There is not enough room in an encyclopedia article to quote everyone and everything even briefly. It is not the purpose of an encyclopedia article to include that much detail. The citations for the research are given and if you want to dispute anything it is your responsibility to acquire the papers and do your homework. It is not my repsonsibility to spoon feed another editor everything that he or she demands. In addition there is a link to the OSL dating and other pertinent articles in Wikipedia. Again, I am not getting paid to prepare articles. I certainly neither have the time nor obligation to spoon feed you everything that you want and do the homework that you should be doing as part of writing an article. Again, a radiocarbon spike cannot explain the OSL dates and certainly cannot explain the pollen data that substantiates many of the radiocarbon dates. The radiocarbon spike cannot be used to dismiss out of hand all of the radiocarbon dates that demonlish the the idea that the Carolina Bays are all contemporaneous with the start of the Younger Dryas. Paul H. (talk) 03:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Quote:- Given that the rims of some Carolina Bays, e.g. Flamingo Bay, have stratified archaeological sites that include in situ Clovis and possible Pre-Clovis artifacts in them.

Information that the article completely omits - the encyclopaedia of telepathy again. All we have is your word for this, and your word is obviously so much more reliable than Firestone, Davias or Ellis.
PaulH01-Again, give me time. I am working on reading and taking notes from the papers which I have found as I have told before. I doubt that either Firestone, Davias or Ellis were able to write their publications in even 24 hours. reading, note taking, and writing take time. It has nothing to do with reliability as you lack any basis to accuse me of, in my opinion, uncivilly. One of the papers that I am working on is:
PaulH01-Moore; Christopher R., Brooks, Mark J., Kimball, Larry R., Newman, Margaret E., Kooyman, Brian P, 2016, Early Hunter-Gatherer Tool Use and Animal Exploitation: Protein and Microwear Evidence from the Central Savannah River Valley, American Antiquity. vol. 81, no. 1, pp. 132 - 147. Paul H. (talk) 03:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Quote:- It will take several days as I am not getting paid revise Wikipedia articles.

And neither is Tate being paid to sort out all the errors within academia, but we are getting there slowly.

Quote:- the person indulging in advocacy as your the one 1. using self-published web pages, 2 non-peer reviewed abstracts.

We go to those sources because academia (and this article) are deliberately withholding evidence. Both academia and this article will not investigate the orientation-triangualtion of the Carolina, Georgia, Kansas and Nebraska Bays because this information strongly conflicts with the established faith that the Bays are natural aeolian formations. So academia withholds that information, because it knows that anyone who sees the map of orientations will start asking awkward questions. That is not science, that is a faith and a creed.
PaulH01-Oh my. The fact that you have to imagine imaginary conspiracies tells me a lot about from where you coming. Your accusation that ..academia (and this article) are deliberately withholding evidence.. is certainly an inappropriate attitude for a Wikipedia editor. Regardless of what you believe, it is still inappropriate to use using self-published web pages, 2 non-peer reviewed abstracts, and 3. personal research in Wikipedia. Paul H. (talk) 03:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Quote:- refusing to acknowledge any evidence that contradicts your personal beliefs about the Carolina Bays.

Your evidence (which is not referenced) refuses to take into account the possibility of an impact. Older C14 evidence may well have been found, but that evidence may have preexisted the impact. Older OSL evidence may well have been found, but that evidence may have preexisted the impact. You say there is stratigraphy in the bay rims. Yet when I saw one being trenched it had no identifiable stratigraphy at all - just a layer of iron deposits that are normally left by the water table.
PaulH01-First, you are wrong. One of the coauthors, Christopher R. Moore, of the paper that I mentioned argues for an Younger Dryas impact in other papers that he has published. second, It defies the Law of Superposition to claim that the sediment filling a Carolina Bay is older than a hypothetical impact that might have created it. Finally, you are exstrapolating from only one rim. Just you did not see stratigraphy in one Carolina Bay rim fails to demonstrate that all Carolina Bay rims lack stratigraphy. You cannot rationally claim that all bays rim lack stratigraphy because one of them lacks stratigraphy. In case of Flamingo Bay, archaeology was also stratified according to age, which is a clear confirmation of intact sediment stratification. Go see the publications cited in the above paper.
Plus, you need to review your own 'personal beliefs'. Please give a mechanism for the consistent Bay orientation towards the center of the Great Lakes, for all the Bay populations across half of North America. Give me one reasonable natural process that will line up all those Bays, whether they are low-level coastal, or high altitude continental. And then show me that process at work somewhere else on the globe. And document all of that from peer-reviewed papers. You cannot do it, can you? So who exactly is 'refusing to acknowledge any evidence that contradicts your personal beliefs'?
PaulH01-Given that there are more than enough data to demonstrate that these bays date from different periods of time separated by as much as 100,000 years, the triangulation observations are meaningless. You need to explain how a single impact can create Carolina Bays that differ in age by 10,000s to over a 100,000 years. I don't need to provide an explanation as the lack of an accepted alternate hypothesis is not proof that another hypothesis is true. This is the same argument that Intelligent Design makes by stating that the lack of an accepted cause for the Cambrian explosion is proof of Intelligent Design. Paul H. (talk) 03:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Quote:- In addition, these observations also demonstrate the Rainwater Bays are clearly of a different age then a number of Carolina Bays, which are older than 27,000 BP according to radiocarbon dates from and palynology of the sediments filling the bays. This all makes the so-called triangulation an utterly meaningless and pseudoscientific exercise because it incorrectly assumes that all of these bays of the same age, which they are not

We can all play that game. Try this amendment to your statement:
In addition, the triangulation observations demonstrate that the Rainwater Bays and Carolina Bays are clearly of the same age. This all makes the so-called Carbon dating and OSL dating an utterly meaningless and pseudoscientific exercise because it incorrectly assumes that some of these bays may be of a different age, which they are not.
PaulH01-The triangulation observations prove nothing of the sort. Rejecting radiometric dating and the loess stratigraphy because they are inconsistent with your ideas is the game that Young Earth creationists play in respect to the age of the Earth. Besides, is does matter because Wikipedia does not allow original research, either yours or mine in its articles. If original research was allowed, I could post cross-sections that I made from publicly available water well logs and oil and gas well geophysical logs showing a complete absence of any impact crater beneath the Saginaw Bay region and other comments However, such material is not allowed and, thus, is another matter for another venue. Paul H. (talk) 03:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
You see how you have joined a faith, not a science? Gather ALL the fact, not just the ones you like, or are a part of the 'consensus'. Test ALL the hypotheses, not just the ones you like, or are a part of the 'consensus'. And more importantly, try to critique your favourite hypothesis, or get someone else to. You may be surprised at the result.

Quote:- Similarly, the best that I can tell, the Coriolis argument is quite lacking in any understanding of the science associated with it to point of being be quite embarrassing. It is such bad pseudoscience ... the Coriolis argument is pseudoscientific technobabble."

Seriously? Do you not understand the Coriolis or Eötvös effects? How can you dismiss a theory (the impact theory) when you don't even understand the science behind it? You should be ashamed of such a comment, because this is not science. Coriolis controls cyclonic and hurricane formation. Do you maintain that hurricanes spinning in the same direction in each hemisphere is a mere coincidence? Do you think that Navy gunners added Coriolis adjustments to their fire control systems because they were duped by pseudoscience?
PaulH01-No. But neither is Davias a Navy gunner shooting down planes. Otherwise, he would know better than he does. :-) Paul H. (talk) 03:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Your comment is a very good demonstration of why modern academia is stagnating. To understand Carolina Bay formation you need to be a polymath, and academia has specialised to such a degree that the polymath has almost become extinct. And you have just demonstrated that as a fact. And yet you have placed yourself in a position where you can suppress knowledge and research, simply to preserve the views of your own speciality. You have become a scientific equivalent of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Coriolis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_force
Some bed-time reading:
Modern Exterior Ballistics: The Launch and Flight Dynamics of Symmetric Projectiles
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0764307207
Tate Tatelyle (talk) 01:31, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
PaulH01-Yes, I do enough to know that Davias' is hopelessly ill-informed in the way that he uses it. That, not any imaginary conspiracies, provides one of many reasons why he is justifiably ignored by other scientists. Paul H. (talk) 04:00, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
PaulH01-Your factually bankrupt and imaginary complaints about polymaths and imaginary conspiracies and silly complaints about me doing any sort of suppressing of knowledge and research tells me and others more about you and nothing about Carolina Bays. Today there are few polymaths, but just about any research done today, especially the archaeological studies involving Carolina Bays involve interdisciplinary teams of researchers from 4, 5, or more specialties, which puts any alleged polymath to shame in bringing multiple lines of science together in a single project. Paul H. (talk) 04:00, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
PaulH01-I guess that I am going to have to prepare a long planned paper about alleged Younger Dryas impact craters and definitely include the completely imaginary Saginaw Bay Manifold. Hopefully, Geology today is still interested. So much for not doing something when I had the opportunity. Paul H. (talk) 04:21, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, it is so uplifting to see that the scientific method is alive and well in the modern era - truly fair and unbiased researcher who will merely follow the evidence and data wherever it leads. It is heartening to learn that science still retains is essential core of integrity. Tatelyle (talk) 13:42, 9 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
PaulH02-You need to know that it is extremely bad manners on either on your part or for any editor to alter the comments of another editor in any manner. As a result, I have changed back your edits, except for the spelling correction. Paul H. (talk) 14:08, 9 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
PaulH03-For your information, I have researched the available literature and even collected publically available subsurface data, including lithologic logs of water wells, geophysical logs of oil and gas wells, published subsurface cross-sections, and structural geology maps from the Michigan Geological Survey and the Michigan Office of Oil, Gas, and Minerals. This material is available online from either one of these agencies and there are more than enough water and oil and gas well logs available to construct detailed cross-sections and map the bedrock topography within the Saginaw Bay area. I also personally contacted Dr. John Esch and obtained a preprint, which is not now for public distribution, of the bedrock topography map of Michigan that he recently prepared. I studied a representative selection of this data and available publications and followed this evidence wherever it lead. What I found, is that there is a complete absence of any crater in the bedrock surface that would be produced by an impact, even an oblique impact, capable of creating the Australasian tektite field as recently argued by Michael Davias. In addition, in the subsurface, there is a complete absence of the massive tectonic deformation that an impact, even an oblique one, capable of creating the Australasian tektite field would have produced. Because you cannot create a crater the size proposed by Michael Davias and the Australasian tektite field without breaking an awful lot of bedrock and creating a massive hole in ground, this data is more than enough to argue that the Saginaw Bay Manifold is utterly imaginary and Michael Davias has selectively cherry picked the data in arguing for its existence. Paul H. (talk) 14:41, 9 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
PaulH03- By the way, a regrettably small-scale draft version of the map showing bedrock topography and drift thickness is:
PaulH03- Esch, J., 2012, Bedrock Topography, Glacial Drift Thickness, Bedrock Outcrops, and Bedrock Valleys of Michigan. On the Rocks: A Newsletter of the Michigan Basin Geological Society. 2012-2013 Number 3, November 2012. accessed November 11, 2016.
PaulH03- I would certainly like to know what research that you have done towards understanding Michael Davias' arguments. Paul H. (talk) 15:06, 9 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
{What research} Since I have no resources and funding, because outsiders never do get resources and funding, my options are limited. Perhaps you could arrange a small department and a stipend for me at your university. No? I thought not. However, I have managed to arrange for low speed impact testing (350 m/s) of soft materials onto silts and sands, to assess the form of the resulting craters. But only because there still are some scientists out there who are willing to explore all avenues, despite the displeasure of their peers. And regards the evidence for the primary impact site, I presume you do realise that the region was covered with 2 km of ice at the time, so the surface crater is hardly going to be a classic form. And this was a very shallow-angle impact too, a butterfly crater. And I presume you do realise that the Great Lakes bear a certain circular-type topography. But I don't subscribe to the Australasian theory, so the impact crater I am envisaging would be somewhat smaller than Davias - but large enough to spread ice debris all over eastern N America. I await the letter from your university regarding the funding they will assign to me, and thank you in advance for your recommendation to the dean... Tatelyle (talk) 22:36, 10 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

.

See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Tatelyle - this is the fringe writer Ralph Ellis.[2] Doug Weller talk 20:00, 23 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

New Southeastern Geology Paper About Carolina Bays[edit]

The paper is:

Moore, C. R., M. J. Brooks, D. J. Mallinson, P. R. Parham, A. H. Ivetser, J. K. Feathers, 2016 The Quaternary evolution of Herdon Bay, a Carolina Bay on the coastal plain of of North Carolina (USA): Implications for paleoclimate and oriented lake genesis. Southeastern Geology. vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 145-171. (March 2016).

They found that LiDAR images showed that Herdon Bay, a Carolina Bay, exhibited a regressive sequence of sand rims that partially backfill the the older portions of this bay. These rims and subsurface data provided evidence for the episodic migration of this bay by more than 600 meters to the northwest. Single grain optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) age estimates indicate that the oldest rim formed about 36.7 +/- 4.1 ka and the youngest rim formed around 29.6 +/- 3.1 to 27.2 +/- 2.8 ka. They interpreted these dates as indicating the rim construction and bay migration was coincident with Marine Isotope Stage 3 through early Marine Isotope Stage 2, which was a time of rapid oscillations in climate.

A significant aspect of this study is that they used single grained OSL dating, which allows the detection of mixing of different populations of sand grains with different OSL ages.

More papers at Christopher Moore's Academic U Page Yours,

Paul H.


Tatelyle is Ralph Ellis[edit]

See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Tatelyle. Doug Weller talk 09:00, 24 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 20 June 2019[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved. (non-admin closure)Ammarpad (talk) 06:01, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]


Carolina bayCarolina bays – These are bays, not a "Bay". And of course this is a common reference. Staszek Lem (talk) 22:35, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support per WP:NCPLURAL, this is a group of distinct entities that are nevertheless being considered together (preceded almost invariably by the word "the") as with Florida Keys, the Americas, and the Rivers of New Zealand. —BarrelProof (talk) 00:30, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support the Carolina Bays are not "a bay" in the nautical sense of the term, but rather they are geological formations on land. Because there are hundreds of these formations, they are plural, "bays". WP:NCPLURAL -- Netherzone (talk) 23:02, 25 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Geomorphology section[edit]

The removal of the peer-reviewed reference dealing directly with the geomorphology of the Carolina Bays[1] was not in the best interest of users of Wikipedia. Sciencebookworm (talk) 18:57, 12 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  1. ^ Zamora, A., A model for the geomorphology of the Carolina Bays, Geomorphology (2017), DOI 10.1016/j.geomorph.2017.01.019 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2017.01.019
I suspect that the above paper has been removed not only because it is a primary source, but it has been judged in print to be quite ill-informed, sloppy research as illustrated by the discussion in:
Schaetzl, R.J., Sauck, W., Heinrich, P.V., Colgan, P.M. and Holliday, V.T., 2019. Commentary on Klokočník, J., Kostelecký, and Bezděk, A. 2019. The putative Saginaw impact structure, Michigan, Lake Huron, in the light of gravity aspects derived from recent EIGEN 6C4 gravity field model. Journal of Great Lakes Research 45: 12–20. Journal of Great Lakes Research.
Although Schaetzl et al. (2019) does not comment on the rather dubious impact mechanics proposed by Zamora (2017) for the Carolina Bays, They do point out:
  • 1. There is compelling evidence that Saginaw Bay region was ice free at the start of the Younger Dryas. This completely discredits any hypothesis of an impact into an ice sheet covering the Saginaw Bay region as the Laurentide Ice had long-since retreated from the region.
  • 2. Lacustrine shorelines and deltas have been mapped around Saginaw Bay that have been securely dated as being older than the start of the Younger Dryas. Their existence soundly refutes the existence of either a Saginaw Bay impact or ice sheet covering the Saginaw Bay region at the start of the start of the Younger Dryas.
  • 3. There is a complete absence of documented, undisputed evidence of shock metamorphism such as shocked quartz, high-pressure mineral glasses and melts, and shattercones within the Saginaw Bay region that would be associated with a crater of this size.
  • 4. Finally, there is complete absence of documented, undisputed evidence of the extensive fracturing and brecciation of bedrock, and circular gravity and magnetic anomalies that would be associated with a crater of this size within the Saginaw Bay region.
In addition to the above concerns, Zamora (2017) is unaware of loess stratigraphy and Optically-Stimulated Luminescence dates showing that the Rainwater Basins date to around 35,000 calendar years B.P. this make them far too old to have been associated with an Younger Dryas impact as he argues.
Despite being published in a peer-review journal, the research in Zamora (2017) has been judged to be of quite poor quality and reliability. If it is cited in the Carolina Bays article, Schaetzl et al. (2019) findings about the imaginary nature of his proposed location of a Younger Dryas Saginaw Bay impact need also be included. Paul H. (talk) 17:25, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Wetland Science and Management 2023[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 10 January 2023 and 20 April 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jetresca (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Environment4992 (talk) 17:55, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative Explanations[edit]

I think it is important to list various alternative explanations but the long discussion of meteorite impacts is far too extensive given that it has been broadly rejected and is little more than a historical curiosity. This section would be better balanced if all four of the dismissed alternatives were given equal weight. 83.68.136.74 (talk) 17:52, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm inclined to agree --Lick-rocks (talk) 19:53, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is not just one single meteorite impact explanation for the formation of Carolina Bays. Instead there are four different alternative explanantions that involved extraterrestrial impacts, the oldest of which is the direct impact of meteorites. Others involve indirect impacts and are notable enough to be mentioned in this article despite being rejected because they have been published in the peer-reviewed literature. The papers include:
Zamora, A., 2017. A model for the geomorphology of the Carolina Bays. Geomorphology, 282, pp.209-216.
Davias M, Harris T. An Incomprehensible Cosmic Impact at the Mid Pleistocene Transition; Searching for the Missing Crater Using Australasian Tektite Suborbital Analysis and Carolina Bays’ Major Axes Triangulation. in Foulger, G.R., Hamilton, L.C., Jurdy, D.M., Stein, C.A., Howard, K.A., and Stein, S., eds., In the Footsteps of Warren B. Hamilton: New Ideas in Earth Science: Geological Society of America Special Paper 553, https://doi.org /10.1130/2021.2553(24).
Note that these are recent papers, 2017 and 2022. Even though they are badly flawed and rejected by me and other geologists, these explanations should be left in the article. Paul H. (talk) 21:43, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
it is the volume of discussion that I think is unnecessary. Citing these rather obscure papers is fine as long as it is clear that they are out of the mainstream. I don’t see why this should get so much attention relative to the other alternative (and also rejected) interpretations. 83.68.136.74 (talk) 22:17, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think they all need to be considered. Doug Weller talk 11:44, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Orientation shift?[edit]

the orientation of the long axes of Carolina bays systematically rotate northward along the Atlantic Coastal Plain from northern Georgia to northern Virginia; the average trend of the long axes of Carolina Bays varies from N16°W in east-central Georgia to N22°W in southern South Carolina, N39°W in northern South Carolina, N49°W in North Carolina, and N64°W in Virginia. [emph added]

I'd call that shift westward, or counter-clockwise, rather than northward. —WWoods (talk) 18:43, 17 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Wetland Science and Management 2024[edit]

This article is currently the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 January 2024 and 23 April 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): WaluigiBoard (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Humedalez (talk) 14:26, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]