Paleotsunami Detectives Hunt for Ancient Disasters – Hakai Magazine

Hokusai's The Great Wave at Kanagawa (1760-1849) vintage Japanese Ukiyo-e woodcut print (Public domain image via Wikimedia, digitally enhanced by rawpixel).

Gigantic tsunamis have been decimating coastlines since time immemorial. We ignore these prehistoric warnings at our own peril.

A boulder weighing more than 40 tonnes sits on the sand high above the ocean. Dwarfing every other rock in view, it is conspicuously out of place. The answer to how this massive outlier got here lies not in the vast expanse of the Atacama Desert behind it but in the Pacific Ocean below…