Roche moutonnee formation is the process by which an overriding glacier shapes an outcrop of resistant bedrock into an asymmetric mound: the up-glacier side is smoothed and gently sloped by abrasion as ice and embedded debris scrape across it, while the down-glacier side is left steep and jagged where glacial plucking pulls blocks of rock away along joints and fractures loosened by pressure release. The resulting asymmetry lets a geologist read the direction of past ice flow directly off the landform long after the glacier is gone.
Facts
Process Type TimescaleThousands to tens of thousands of years of sustained ice cover. 1 Sources
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