Grasshopper Glacier is in the Beartooth Mountains, Custer National Forest, Montana, U.S. The glacier is within the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, a part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Grasshopper Glacier is approximately 0.20 miles long and 0.25 mi wide. Starting at a point more than 11,300 feet above sea level, the glacier originally wa…
Grasshopper Glacier is in the Beartooth Mountains, Custer National Forest, Montana, U.S. The glacier is within the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, a part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Grasshopper Glacier is approximately 0.20 miles long and 0.25 mi wide. Starting at a point more than 11,300 feet above sea level, the glacier originally was more than 5 mi long but has receded significantly since first researched in the early 20th century. As of 2007, the glacier consists of several smaller glaciers, each occupying a different north-facing cirque. Grasshopper Glacier was named for the tens of millions of grasshoppers that have been found entombed in the ice, some for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. Many of the grasshoppers are of species that are now extinct, and their high level of preservation allowed early researchers to send some specimens to entomologists for identification. During this research it was discovered that some of the grasshoppers were of the extinct species Melanoplus spretus, known to have existed at least up to the beginning of the 20th century.
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