Giant Boulder at Clifftop in Tonga was carried by a 50 -meter high wave

Martin Köhler stands in front of Maka Lahi Boulder in Tonga

Martin Köhler/University of Queensland

A 1200-ton boulder in Tonga was swept inland when a 50-meter-high wave slammed into a 30 meter high cliff.

“This is not just a stone; it is the largest wavy stone that everyone is found on Cliff and the third big stone in the world, so it really needed giant forces to move it so far over such a high place,” says Martin Köhler at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

While Boulder has long been known for some locals like Maka Lahi, which means great rock, it had never before studied by researchers.

Köhler and his colleagues performed fieldwork in Tonga in July 2024 looking for boulders deposited by Tsunamis on cliffs. On their last day in the Pacific Nation, Villars told them about a stone that they might want to see.

“We certainly did not expect to find such a large stone that was basically the last minute of our fieldwork, and I knew quite quickly that this was a great discovery,” says Köhler.

At 14 meters long, 12 meters wide and almost 7 meters high, it was a “very striking” stone, he says, made of coral reef -fledmetone Breccia. It had avoided previous searches for possible tsunami stone blocks in satellite images when it had vegetation that grew over the top of it and the forest surrounds it.

After seeing the boulder, the researchers were able to find a massive gash in the clip over the sea, 200 meters away, from which they believe the rock was torn.

Next, the team used computer models to determine how such a large stone, so high above sea level, could be moved so far inland.

Changing it would have required a wave with a minimum height of 50 meters and a 90-secret period, which means it would have taken one and a half minutes to pass and had flow speeds of over 22 meters per second, says Köhler. It is believed that such a huge tsunami may have been relatively located and caused by a nearby earth ship underwater.

Dating dream an age of 6891 years, thousands of years before human settlement of the island.

“It was hard to me to think it was a 50 meter wave because we hadn’t really seen or now of such a big wave before,” says Köhler. “But if you think it’s huge boulder, sitting 200 meters inland at 39 meters high cliffs, it’s easier to understand.”

Only two tsunami-deceived stone blocks found on land are bigger: Obiishi-rock on Shimoji-shima, Japan, which weighs 3400 tons, and Maui Rock, also at Tonga weighing 1500 tons.

Topics:

Leave a Comment