The crackle-glaze boulder shapes, the crinkum-crankum ledges, the skewed pagoda silhouettes of the mountains belonged to no Occidental geography.
Based on direct observations of each boulder (size, shape, weight and long axis azimuth), together with hydrodynamic equations it is possible to hypothesize the extreme event geodynamic or meteorological— which was responsible for this singular accumulation.
After repeating the process 72 times and tying all the pieces together, Steger had successfully mimicked the boulder's shape.
They are circles and ovals of boulders, many shaped like ships, with a taller stone at prow and stern.
Notable features of the Hill Complex included a huge boulder in a shape similar to that of the Zimbabwe Bird, from where the king presided over every important ritual, such as the judgment of criminals, the appeasing of ancestors and sacrifices to rainmaker gods.
Also known as "Bowling Ball Beach," Schooner Gulch has thousands of boulders of equal shape, size and spacing lined up like soldiers defying the tides.
Differences between the results from modelling and field data are most probably caused by variables such as coastal plain roughness (buildings, trees), microtopography, particle shape, and boulder collision during transport that are summarised as coefficients in the mathematical models.
Accordingly, to initiate the transport of a 30-ton boulder, about polyhedric in shape and characterised by a c-axis of 1.20 m, a minimum storm wave of about 16.18 m high or a tsunami of about 4.04 m high was necessary.
Gravity barely exists on Itokawa, so surface collisions strong enough to shape the boulders couldn't have taken place.
