Tomanowos, the meteorite that survived mega-floods and human folly

[Admin]

The rock with arguably the most fascinating story on Earth has an ancient name.

Tomanowos, the meteorite that survived mega-floods and human folly : Read more

 

[R R Erickson]

The rock with arguably the most fascinating story on Earth has an ancient name.

Tomanowos, the meteorite that survived mega-floods and human folly : Read more

Just a couple of minor corrections to the Tomanowas meteorite article:

(1) The ice dam that formed Glacial Lake Missoula was on the Clark Fork River (not just Fork River) in Montana. The ice dam probably formed and collapsed numerous times about 15,000 years ago, around the time of the last maximum advance of Pleistocene glaciation, each collapse producing a mega-flood, though some were probably more "mega" than others.

(2) The name of the geologist who first developed the mega-flood explanation for the Channeled Scablands is J Harlen Bretz (the first part of his name is just a capital letter J without a period after it; the J is not an abbreviation for something).

Otherwise, a very informative piece. I was not aware of the connection between the Willamette/Tomanowas meteorite and the Bretz floods. And Bretz deserves more public recognition as the geologist who first brought catastrophism back into mainstream geology as a natural but extreme extension of uniformitarianism. In the last few decades, other examples have been recognized world-wide of collapsing ice dams and mega-floods. The example I'm most familiar with is Glacial Lake Lesley on the West Branch of the Susquehanna River in north-central Pennsylvania (though its mega-floods were much smaller than those from Glacial Lake Missoula).

 

[I_believe]

Great information and it really made my morning to learn more about "toma". Growing up, we learned a lot of ceremonial songs and have quite a few oral traditions regarding toma. It hasn't been until recently that I really started researching more about the object that captivated my imagination as a child. Appreciate the article