Push moraine

A push moraine or pushed moraine is in geomorphology a moraine (a landform formed by glacial processes) that formed when a lowland glacier pushed large amounts of soft, sedimentary rocks in front of it. Pushed moraines generally occur in low, flat plains at higher lattitudes and were formed during the glacial stages of the Quarternary ice age. They can be up to 100 km long and several hundreds of meters in height.

Pushed moraines can be found in the North-American plains, in Siberia and in Northern Europe. They were formed during cool, glacial stages, when glaciers advanced and covered large parts of North America and Eurasia. In soms regions pushed moraines of more than one glacial stage can be recognized, or different generations from a single glacial phase. Since new glacial advanced tend to destroy older pushed moraines, most were formed during the last (110.000 to 10.000 years ago) or second-last (238.000 to 128.000 years ago) glacial advances.