Elephant Rock

3 Pages 707 Words

Elephant Rock, “The Erosion Begins”

Elephant Rock is a unique rock formation located on Prince Edward Island. I went ahead and pasted pictures of Elephant Rock in order from 1976 to the fall of 1998 (Gaudet, 1998). I want to talk about how this rock was formed and the erosion that took place until the rock crumbled.
Elephant Rock, 4 (nautical) miles NNW of the mouth of the Olifants River, is one of the Proclaimed Guano Islands. It is a good radar contact. It is a rocky islet, 15m high, lying just over a cable from the mainland, to which it is joined by a sand bar over which the surf breaks at low water. Some above-water and submerged rocks lie close to this bar, and a reef extends 1 cable to seaward of the islet. In 1948 a steel cableway was erected between the islet and the shore to enable sealers to cross over in all weathers. The original name of the rock was Morrell’s Island, so called by the sealer Captain Banjamin Morrell who, early in the nineteenth century, landed there and made a good haul of seals after he had tried unsuccessfully to enter the Olifants River (Gaudet, 1998).
The first thing that I noticed from these pictures was that the rock’s location was on an ocean side. The lithification (or process of becoming a rock) of this rock seems to originate from the conglomeration of sediments thus creating the sedimentary rock, sandstone. One can see this by first noticing the location of the rock. It is located in a region where there is lots of wind, ice-burgs, and by being at the base of a river, there is high action of water. With all of these factors contributing to the deposit of sediments, they gathered, conglomerated, and over time the Elephant Rock was created. In the pictures, I noticed that at the base of the rock there are what appear to be small, gravel-like fragments. These fragments further support the notion that the rock is sedimentary (Western Development). Even more support for this would be tha...