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Roche Moutonnée


U.S. Geological Survey photo by Bruce Molnia (fair use policy)

A roche moutonnée ("rawsh mootenay") is an elongated knob of bedrock that has been carved and smoothed by an overriding glacier. It is oriented in the direction the glacier flowed. The upstream or stoss side is gently sloping and smooth, and the downstream or lee side is steep and rough. That is generally the opposite of how a drumlin (a similar but larger body of sediment) is shaped. This example is in Glacier Bay, Alaska.

Many glacial features were first described in the Alps by French- and German-speaking scientists. Horace Benedict de Saussure first used the word moutonnée ("fleecy") in 1776 to describe a large set of knobs of rounded bedrock. Today a roche moutonnée is widely believed to mean a rock knob that resembles a grazing sheep (mouton), but that isn't really true. "Roche moutonnée" really is just a technical name nowadays, and it's better not to rely on the etymology. Saussure also named seracs.

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