At last, a curiosity solved. Here is an article via the NPR Media organisation that explains how the boulders in Death Valley desert move and which prior have often have been cited as some kind of a strange mystery. Not so, the answer is clear and actually very obvious now its has been filmed.
A century ago, miners working in California’s Death Valley reported seeing boulders on the desert floor with long trails behind them — as if the stones had been pushed across the sand. But despite 60 years of trying, no one ever saw what moved them.
The cavity in this rock will carry the GPS instrument package and its battery pack across the desert. i
The cavity in this rock will carry the GPS instrument package and its battery pack across the desert.
Richard Norris
Now scientists think they’ve solved the mystery of the “slithering rocks of Death Valley.”
Using GPS tags pasted to the boulders, and a video camera, a geologist from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and his engineer cousin have evidence that broad, jagged panes of melting ice push the stones across the desert, nudged in one direction or another by the breeze. The team details their results in the current issue of the journal Plos One.
via An Icy Solution To The Mystery Of The Slithering Stones : NPR.