[1][2] Malde[3] introduced this to refer to streamlined mounds of gravel deposited by the Bonneville Flood that lie downstream of bedrock projections on the scoured valley floor of the Snake River.
The obstruction for the initiation of pendant bars in the Channeled Scablands is typically either a knob of basalt or the relict bend of a pre-flood meandering valley.
[1][2] In the Channeled Scablands the larger pendant bars in are up to 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) long and rise 30 m (98 ft) above the floors of the preflood valleys.
[1][4] During regular annual floods in Central Texas and elsewhere, much smaller, analogous, mid-channel bars form downstream from river channel obstructions, e.g. large boulders of rockfall, or in the lee of barriers of stable trees and logjams.
In addition to the Channeled Scablands and the valley of the Snake River, pendant bars have been reported from deposits of the formed by the Maumee Torrent in the Maumee River valley of Indiana;[6] the southern spillway of glacial Lake Agassiz;[7] the Souris spillway near Elcott, Saskatchewan;[8] and Ares Vallis, one of the largest cataclysmic flood channels on Mars.