80 years after aerial photography revealed thousands of aligned oval depressions on the USA’s Atlantic Coastal Plain, the geomorphology of the “Carolina bays” remains enigmatic. Geologists and astronomers alike hold that invoking a cosmic impact for their genesis is indefensible. Rather, the bays are commonly attributed to gradualistic fluvial, marine and/or aeolian processes operating during the Pleistocene era. The major axis orientations of Carolina bays are noted for varying statistically by latitude, suggesting that, should there be any merit to a cosmic hypothesis, a highly accurate triangulation network and suborbital analysis would yield a locus and allow for identification of a putative impact site. Digital elevation maps using LiDAR technology offer the precision necessary to measure their exquisitely-carved circumferential rims and orientations reliably. To support a comprehensive geospatial survey of Carolina bay landforms (Survey) we generated about a million km2 of false-color hsv-shaded bare-earth topographic maps as KML-JPEG tile sets for visualization on virtual globes. Considering the evidence contained in the Survey, we maintain that interdisciplinary research into a possible cosmic origin should be encouraged. Consensus opinion does hold a cosmic impact accountable for an enigmatic Pleistocene event - the Australasian tektite strewn field - despite the failure of a 60-year search to locate the causal astroblem. Ironically, a cosmic link to the Carolina bays is considered soundly falsified by the identical lack of a causal impact structure. Our conjecture suggests both these events are coeval with a cosmic impact into the Great Lakes area during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, at 786 ka ± 5 k. All Survey data and imagery produced for the Survey are available on the Internet to support independent research. A table of metrics for 50,000 bays examined for the Survey is available from an on-line Google Fusion Table: https://goo.gl/XTHKC4 . Each bay is also geospatially referenceable through a map containing clickable placemarks that provide information windows displaying that bay’s measurements as well as further links which allows visualization of the associated LiDAR imagery and the bay’s planform measurement overlay within the Google Earth virtual globe: https://goo.gl/EHR4Lf .

Australasian (AA) tektites are distal ejecta of a cosmic impact into terrestrial sediments 788.1 ± 2.8 ka. Protracted explorations within the strewn field, as preferred by consensus opinion, have yielded neither an astrobleme nor a proximal imprint. In 3 lesser strewn fields correlated with progenitor astroblemes, tektites are strewn asymmetrically and their total masses and minimum loft distances scale with projectile kinetic energy (KE) partitioning yield. Pursuing an a priori astrobleme location within the uniquely expansive AA strewn field ignores such findings. Absent identification of proximal ejecta in the strewn field, workers are now inferring that indochinite tektites are proximal, dismissing their known devolatilization, weightless vacuum quench and their carefully derived re-entry speeds, ≥ 80% of Earth escape. A defendable guess 40 years ago, but promoting an a priori astrobleme in Indochina is now impeding progress. Ironically, a cosmic link to the Carolina bays’ genesis is considered soundly falsified by the same absence of a correlated astrobleme. We have measured ~50,000 of these shallow, oriented, ovoid basins, located around an annulus focused on Saginaw Bay, Michigan. We posit the ovoid planforms to be surficial manifestations of cavitation voids within an incomprehensible geophysical mass flow of volatiles and entrained target clastics. Unifying both missing astroblemes, we propose an incomprehensible cosmic event on a hemisphere diametrically opposed to the AA distal tektite strewn field. We invoke a highly oblique, perhaps tangential, hypervelocity projectile ricocheting off the Earth’s limb along an extended footprint. Sub-horizontal shock to thick MIS 20 ice sheet overburden triggered endogenic comminution, as stored pressure potential within the substrate was released by phase change of pore water to steam, provisioning fluidized medial ejecta outflow for Carolina bay emplacement. Shocked ice plume expansion augmented tektite velocities, and dissipated significant partitioned KE, preventing another Chicxulub-style global conflagration. The KE partitioning process conspired with intervening ice age transgressions to dislocate proximal ejecta and obfuscate the cosmic signature. AA tektite Suborbital Analysis with appropriate dynamical accounting supports a putative antipodal Saginaw impact site, as does a recent EIGEN 6C4 gravity field assessment. The hypothesis would be falsified if 26Al/10Be burial dating of terraces under Carolina bays disallows bay deposition circa 788 ka.