Weird Geological Feature - Anyone Know What This Is?

[Aggie]

I'm working near Bumfu Cessford, Alberta this week, and while scoping out some routes to site saw a very strange (to my eye) feature on the satellite / terrain maps.  It's located just west of Cessford at 51.014727,-111.689172 and appears to be a straight, ~20 km long furrow, like two sets of parallel ridges.

Anyone know what the heck this could be?  The geology around here bears heavily the scars of glacial activity, but a glacier would need to be dragging one heck of a boulder to scrape that furrow.  Some sort of moraine?

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I'm no geologist but glacier sounds plausible. The other two things are a fault after an earthquake, and -the least likely- a celestial object, possibly a comet considering that there is no crater at either end of the streaks.

[pieces o nine]

I looked at it on the Googles       but can't help identify. Are there any long-term locals who would be happy to spin some yarns about the area?


The Kettle Moraine in Wisconsin is quite striking, but no parallel gouges like you're describing.

[Aggie]

I'll see if I can collect some pictures and some yarns when I'm in the area and report back.  I thought about the big-chunk-of-space-something possibility, but surely there'd be something written about it?

[Swatopluk]

No volcanic activity there in the last million years or so?

[Sibling DavidH]

It looks interesting but I'm no geologist.  If I'm looking at the right feature it runs not far off N - S; I presume that would be the direction the glaciers were moving?

[Aggie]

No volcanic activity there in the last million years or so?

Not in the last 65,000,000 years and much more, as far as I know...  it's sedimentary rock all the way to the dinosaurs here, and then past that to whenever the oil was laid down in the seas that used to be here.  Anything on the surface here is likely glacially influenced.  No idea which way they were moving overall at the time of the last ice age, although north to south seems possible. 

I drove past the feature today; it probably is not immediately apparent from the ground.  The local hamlet doesn't have even a gas station to ask the locals about it.