The nature and rate of decay of
ice sheets is central to understanding possible impacts of climate change. Twenty-five
years ago, McCabe and Dardis documented the character and distribution of Late
Pleistocene drumlins, deposited in association with the melt of the ice sheet
in western Ireland. The results illustrated several lithofacies associations, interpreted
in the context of depositional environment in association with the ice sheet. These
insights provided a conceptual model for ice-distal to ice-contact subaqueous
deposition, modified by till deposition and drumlinization. The results
provided a detailed documentation of rapid facies changes associated with a
dynamic ice margin, and how these details “may not therefore be linked directly
to climatic change.”
Sedimentology and depositional setting of late Pleistocene drumlins, Galway Bay, Western Ireland by A.
Marshall McCabe and George F. Dardis
