Go to the vocabulary page to review the blue words you learned here. You can also return to the first Learn About the Park page. Thousands of years of weathering and erosion created the shapes and landforms of today's badlands! Keep reading to learn more about these landforms and the habitats they provide. Over time the harder rocks stayed behind while the soft sediments eroded away. Some are just inches tall, but others tower above your head! This type of erosion can create pillars we call hoodoos! A hoodoo is a pillar with a hard rock or fossil on top. Some layers were much harder and protected the softer layers. The river carved into the soft layers of the earth. Viewable only from an aerial perspective, the Guardian resembles the appearance of a human wearing an Aboriginal headdress. The Little Missouri River flows through western North Dakota. Discovered only in 2005 by Lynn Hickox via Google Earth, the Badlands Guardian also known as Indian Head is a geomorphological feature situated near Medicine Hat in south-eastern Alberta, Canada. After millions of years the rocks and sediments faced a new force of erosion: the Little Missouri River.
The ice moved south from Canada and started changing how rivers flowed. Now we fast forward to about a million years ago. Sediments were buried and turned into rocks. The petrified wood on top is protecting the material beneath from erosion. The large pillar in this photo is called a hoodoo. Sandstone, limestone, and shale are types of sedimentary rocks. When they are buried for a long time they squish together to form rocks. These layers of ash, sand and mud are called sediments. This means some layers you see in the Badlands are actually old mountains! Erosion from the mountains also filled up the wet places. As volcanoes erupted their ash dumped into the swamps. To the west, the Rocky Mountains were forming. It supported many fish and reptile species. If you learn geology, you have to know these two words! Weathering is when rocks break apart erosion is when stuff starts to move! There are different types of each idea, but that is a basic definition.Ībout 65 million years ago (give or take a few million!), the place we call North Dakota was a warm, swampy ecosystem. You can walk into Theodore Roosevelt National Park and see rocks that were created millions of years ago! These rocks are visible because of two things: weathering and erosion.
The Badlands let us see ancient layers of the earth without having to dig or make computer models.
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