Okotoks Erratic
Far from home, this enormous hitchhiker from the northern Rockies greets another sunrise in a pasture south of Calgary. Its presence here tells of mighty glaciers, and is aiding geologists in unraveling the story of the ice age. But its essence is much older. Like other, smaller erratics strung out in a ribbon of evidence from Jasper National Park south to Montana, the "big rock" at Okotoks is quartzite, rock that began as the sea beds of coastal Alberta more than 550 million years ago.
Photo courtesy of Heartland Associates, Inc.
Photo by Jerry Kautz.
