(ORDO NEWS) — The redistribution of the mass of ice sheets at the end of the last ice age provoked a change in the slope of the entire landscape in North America, which determined the direction of megaflows.
This is the conclusion of the authors of a new study, which writes the publication Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
When the ice sheets of North America began to melt at the end of the last ice age, the so-called Missoula megastreams arose – catastrophic floods that had a significant impact on ecosystems.
Since then, deep channels in the rocks have remained in the eastern Washington area, causing interest among geologists.
According to Tamara Pico, an assistant professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, the scientists studied the preserved tide marks and tried to recreate the extent of the floods.
In the course of the work, it turned out that the topography at the end of the ice age was seriously different from the modern one – all because of the deformation of the earth’s crust under the mass of ice.
“Deformation of the earth’s crust under the weight of ice changed the height of the relief very, very significantly – in some areas by hundreds of meters.
Our models showed that the change in the slope of the crust determined the direction of the flow of megaflows,” Pico said, adding that the witnesses of the grandiose floods were the Indians of North America .
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