Badlands National Park
Located in South Dakota, Badlands National Park features stunning and rare landscapes created from sharply eroded buttes, carved spires and delicate pinnacles. Millions of years of water and wind erosion washed away soft sediment, leaving harder surfaces of colorful rock and volcanic ash. The terrain preserved the largest fossil beds from the Oligocene epoch and today the park's unique landforms are like geologic sculptures that remain a marvel for geologists and visitors alike.
Hoodoos
Hoodoos are fragile pinnacles or spires of rock formed by wind and water erosion. Visible stripes or horizontal strata reveal layers of rock and sediment with varying degrees of hardness. In the Badlands, the hoodoos resemble surreal and gravity-defying moonscapes. Badland hoodoos change constantly and visible shifts can be seen after a single thunderstorm.
Scarp and Scoria
Scarp and scoria are hard, erosion-resistant surfaces that comprise visible landforms. Scarp is hard rock that has withstood millions of years of erosion and comprises the sharply carved buttes that remain standing throughout the Badlands park. Scoria is the hard, dark crust formed from lava flows and ash. It is visible as the dark gray layers or black stripes embedded within the scarp.
Fossil Beds
The Badlands are the world's richest source of Oligocene-era fossil beds, dating back about 30 million years. Vertebrate fossils of large mammals have been found in the Badlands. They reveal that the Badlands were once forests that provided a home for the ancestors of horses, rhinoceros, bison and bighorn sheep. Geologists speculate that large numbers of mammals were killed by floods and preserved for millennia in the river sediment.
Tags: Badlands National, Badlands National Park, National Park, that remain
