Abstract:
Prehistoric North Carolina looked vastly different compared to the contemporary landscape. Mountains near Raleigh would have been much taller than western Carolina's peaks and the eastern portion of the state would have been completely submerged. Evidence of this comes from excavated whale skeletons found in Miocene sediments in Edgecombe, Halifax, and Northampton. Students from University of North Carolina's Geology Department dug whale remains from the Miocene strata near Tarboro in 1934.