[marssaxman]

Geology went hard for uniformitarianism during the 19th century as a reaction against the earlier "catastrophist" worldview, which had interpreted all major land forms as consequences of the great global flood described in the Bible (or something like it). This yielded a strong preference for theories involving continuous processes operating over long spans of time, and skepticism of theories involving sudden, violent changes. This swung back to a better balance during the 20th century; with the ghost of Noah's Ark exorcised, the role of local "catastrophes" in geologic history could again be taken seriously.

[bombcar]

Wasn’t there some massive icedam caused lake that was the size of basically the entire Pacific Northwest and it flooded out in a matter of years? And nobody believed that could happen.

[matt_morgan]

Right, figuring that out was an important step in our appreciation that catastrophes happen and are impactful on a large scale, you know, not just little things that get covered up by longer-term, consistent processes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_Lake_Missoula

It's why western Washington state is all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channeled_scablands

[astrange]

The Mediterranean may also have been filled in a single event over a few months: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanclean_flood