Mysterious tree stumps sprouting from Outer Banks beaches date to 1450s, study says

Dozens of still-rooted tree stumps uncovered by beach erosion have given scientists a window into what North Carolina’s Outer Banks looked like before the arrival of Europeans.

Nearly 30 stumps have emerged in the past two years and radiocarbon dating shows those on the Currituck Banks date to between 1450 and 1500, with a second group on Hatteras Island dating to between 1650 and 1800, according to a study presented at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting.

To put that into perspective, Europeans didn’t land on the Outer Banks until 1524, Outerbanks.org reports.

The stumps are red cedar and oak and represent ”former forests devoured by the sea,” the AGU wrote in a news release.

“As sea level rises, the shoreline moves toward higher ground in a geologic process called transgression. It’s likely that creeping seawater killed the roots of these trees, so understanding when the trees died could mean understanding the timeline of past transgression,” the AGU reported.

National Park Service physical scientist Michael Flynn is credited with taking notice of the stumps at the water’s edge in June 2022 at Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

“We were inspecting conditions along the oceanfront of Rodanthe ... as follow-up from the Mother’s Day storm and discovered what we first thought were old pilings were actually old tree trunks,” Flynn wrote in a 2022 social media post.

His post came to the attention of Emily Elliott, a coastal geologist at the University of Alabama, and the two began collaborating on research, the American Geophysical Union reported in EOS.org.

The stumps have given scientists critical baseline data on the history of erosion on the Outer Banks, which can be used to identify areas historically at greatest risk of succumbing to sea-level rise, the report states.

“The tides have been uncovering and reburying such stumps for centuries. But now, Flynn, Elliott, and their team of collaborators are working to understand the history of the islands’ movement, and they are hoping these long-gone forests can help modern land managers plan for the future,” AGU reports.

Beachfront homes now sit at the water’s edge on Hatteras Island, and a growing number have collapsed into the ocean. So far in 2024, six have fallen into the Atlantic in Rodanthe, the National Park Service reports. Erosion has also exposed toxic fuel stores at a buried facility site within Cape Hatteras National Seashore.

This story was originally published December 16, 2024 at 7:31 AM with the headline "Mysterious tree stumps sprouting from Outer Banks beaches date to 1450s, study says."