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How did erosion help give the Matterhorn its distinctive shape?

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A car drives along the Trans-Canada Highway with Mount Sir Donald's sharp, snow-capped peak rising above forested slopes in the Selkirk Mountains, British Columbia. — mountain Mount Sir Donald in the Selkirk Mountains, British Columbia, looms above a segment of the Trans-Canada Highway.

The Matterhorn’s iconic, sharp-peaked shape is the result of intense glacial erosion that occurred during the Quaternary Period.1

Specifically, the mountain was sculpted through the formation of cirques—amphitheatre-shaped hollows carved into the mountainside by glaciers. When three or more of these cirques develop in a radial pattern around a mountain's flanks, their headward erosion gradually wears away the surrounding rock. As these cirques expand, they leave behind steep, vertical headwall cliffs and sharp, knife-edge ridges known as arêtes.12

This process eventually isolates the remaining central rock mass into a jagged, pyramidal peak known as a horn. The Matterhorn serves as the most famous example of this geological phenomenon, where the relentless action of ice has transformed a mountain into its distinctive, towering form.21