The Alien Landscape of Bisti Badlands

The Bisti Badlands , besides called Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness , is a vast rolling landscape of phantasmagoric formations of world too stone located inwards northwestern New Mexico’s high desert lands. Wind too H2O erosion over a long fourth dimension stimulate got carved a fantasy world of foreign stone formations too hoodoos hither inwards the flat of pinnacles , spires , mushrooms too other odd forms that stimulate got attracted names such every bit "Cracked Eggs" , “Bisti Wings” too "Rock Garden".

Bisti is derived from the Navajo discussion “Bistahi” which way "among the adobe formations." De-Na-Zin takes its elevate from or hence other Navajo discussion for "cranes." This niggling visited too largely unknown surface area was 1 time an ancient riverine delta on the shores of an ancient body of body of water , seventy 1 1000 m years ago. As the H2O slow receded , a lush leafage grew along the many riverbanks too many prehistoric animals roamed the region. When the H2O disappeared totally , it left behind layers of jumbled sandstone , mudstone , shale too coal. Much of the coal burned away inwards ancient fires that lasted centuries. Erosion too then shaped the characteristic features of the modern landscape of the Bisti Wilderness. Six 1000 years agone , when the concluding H2O ice historic menses receded , the waters of the melting glaciers helped let out fossils too petrified woods , every bit good every bit eroding the stone into the hoodoos similar a shot visible.

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Alien eggs? Photo credit: John Fowler/Flickr

Mainly 3 kinds of formations are exposed inwards Bisti Wilderness surface area — the Ojo Alamo Formation , which has left bare the thick deposit of volcanic ash from an ancient eruption , too below that the Fruitland formation too the Kirtland Shale.

The Ojo Alamo Formation spans the Mesozoic/Cenozoic boundary , too to a greater extent than oftentimes than non comprise dinosaur fossils. The Fruitland Formation contains layers of sandstone , shale , too coal , too was seat downward when the conditions were marshy , warm too humid , alongside miserable drainage. The Fruitland Formation is establish primarily on the western side of the Wilderness. The Kirtland Shale is the production of alluvial muds too overbank sand deposits from the many channels draining the coastal apparently inwards the belatedly Cretaceous period. It overlies the Fruitland Formation , too is exposed on the eastern side of the badlands. Many of the greyness hoodoos inwards the wilderness are made upwards of this formation.

The unique egg-shaped formation , inwards the “egg factory” surface area , are besides the number of erosion. The cracks are the number of differential weathering , spell the speckled appearance due to mineral deposits inwards the flow that cutting through the sedimentary rock.

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