Quick Facts
name: Dragon’s Eye
position: Uttaklev Beach, Lofoten Islands, Norway
Coordinate: 68.20987277137073, 13.499777198454572
Why it’s great: White sand, algae, and large rocks give this natural formation a unique eye-like appearance.
The “Dragon’s Eye” is a natural depression in the rocks along the northwest coast of Norway that resembles a reptilian eyeball. A boulder at the bottom of the depression protrudes against a background of white sand and layers of algae, forming the pupil of an eye.
“The Dragon’s Eye is a natural feature that likely formed beneath the Fennoscandian ice sheet. The Last Ice Age” Frances Chantelle Nixon“This particular type of glacial landform is called a pothole,” said Dr. Gregory B. Schneider, an associate professor of physical geography and quaternary geology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, in an email to Live Science.
Related: Why does Norway have so many fjords?
The Fennoscandian Ice Sheet was a massive glacier that covered Scandinavia, parts of northern Europe and northwestern Russia during the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago. Glaciation can cause all kinds of geological structures, including what are called plastic, or P, landforms, caused by the erosion of bedrock beneath the ice sheet, Nixon said.
“P-type ice sheets form by meltwater filling with abrasive sediments,” Nixon said. These deposits include rocks of all shapes and sizes, from fine sand to massive boulders. High-pressure meltwater flows moving under the ice “can scrape the bedrock into straight, curved, or circular, smooth-walled depressions that can be a few centimeters to a few meters in width and depth,” Nixon said.
Potholes like Dragon’s Eye are a type of P-type that are thought to have been formed by particularly intense meltwater flows, which cause abrasion and erosion to occur in a circular pattern. “When the meltwater flows eventually slow or disappear, the coarse sediments fall out of suspension and become trapped inside the pothole,” Nixon said, adding that this may be what caused the boulders to settle at the bottom of Dragon’s Eye.
Dragon’s Eye probably emerged from under the ice 16,000 years ago, Nixon said, when the region’s ice age ended. The retreat of the Fennoscandian ice sheet exposed the bedrock and the depression, which is made of gneiss, a type of metamorphic rock with colorful patterns. Mineral Band It enhances the dreamy look of the eyes.
Approximately 5 feet (1.5 meters) in diameter, the eye of the rock changes appearance depending on the time of day and the tides. At high tide, the waves wash over the rock, depositing or removing sand from the cavity, leaving the rock sitting on exposed bedrock. The algae growing in the eye of the rock also change appearance depending on the season and lighting.
