Abstract
The Foothills erratics train (FET) region of Alberta includes a 580-km-long eponymous erratic boulder train, and an adjacent region underlain by drift whose lithology reflects past interaction between glaciers that entered the Foothills and nearby Interior Plains from the Rocky Mountains and the Laurentide Ice Sheet that brought rocks and minerals into this area from the Canadian Shield. Landforms in the region are a legacy of flowing glacial ice, ice stagnation and damming of drainage and re-establishment of eastward river drainage. The FET is the only known erratic boulder train to have been transported in a medial moraine position between mountain glaciers and a continental ice sheet. Based upon its rapid removal by human activities, it is suggested that other comparable erratic trains may have existed elsewhere but were erased by agriculture over the millennia.
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Jackson, L.E. (2017). The Foothills Erratics Train Region. In: Slaymaker, O. (eds) Landscapes and Landforms of Western Canada . World Geomorphological Landscapes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44595-3_11
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