We discover another interesting landscape boulder near roadside, Calumet Road, Miami County, Ohio. Location: N 39 59' 11" W084 19'23".We found this shaped, grooved, and striated glacial erratic, a small example of a landform called a roche moutonnee, plucked from its landscape of origin and rafted far south of the Canadian Shield where these teardrop-shaped glacier erosion features sculpt the surface of the ground. Evening's low sun shadows shallow linear groves and pitted chatter-marks cutting texture into the smooth surface of the granite boulder.
The grooves and striations follow the smoothly arching abrasion-shaped surface of the boulder. The large grooves and the deep striae are parallel. Lighter striations cross
primary texture at obtuse angles. All roughly follow the length of this long glacial erratic, a chunk of granite rafted by the Wisconsin Ice Sheet. The upstream end narrows, the downstream end is wide. Both ends are shaped by glacier erosion. Roche moutonnees terminate in blocky ice-plucked ends like the one pictured.This boulder tells a rock-story.
A roche moutonnee (sheepback) is a landform found where the Wisconsin Ice Sheet eroded crystalline bedrock in situ (in place), shaping minor bedrock prominences into smooth whaleback forms with truncated downstream ends. Early descriptions named them for their resemblance to a sheep's back or to mutton-oiled wigs popular in the day.
This discovery of a roche moutonnee made into an erratic is unique, geographically. The boulder is a landscaping feature at the entry to a private nature preserve in Miami County, Ohio, far south of the Canadian Shield. Today, the boulder rests in position with ice-sculpted side up as it formed in nature. Following formation in place by flowing glacier ice carrying abrasive rocks and sand, the shaped boulder was plucked by the south-flowing ice and rafted to its present position--well, nearby. The boulder has been repositioned from a field nearby to its feature position in landscaping bordering the entry to River Ridge Nature Preserve, The Lange Estate, West Milton, Ohio.
