Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

At the end of the Cretaceous period (approximately 70 million years ago), what is now western North Dakota in the United States was covered by an inland sea. Over time this area was dramatically altered by the draining of this sea; the uplifting of the mid-North American continent; sedimentation and erosion from rivers in nearby mountain ranges; volcanic activity; altered climate patterns; glaciation; and the colonization, migration, immigration, and extinction of a wide variety of species. Today this area contains geological and ecological formations found nowhere else in North Dakota: buttes, mesas, canyons, bentonite clay slopes, scoria deposits, naturally burning coal veins, petrified forests, perennial prairie grasslands, ponderosa pine forests, and riparian communities. Elk, bison, pronghorn antelope, bighorn sheep, ferrets, and prairie dogs that are now locally extinct over much or all of North Dakota can be found in this area. Called “Mako Shika” (“land bad”) by the Lakota Indians who inhabited this area until the end of the nineteenth century and “les mauvaises terres a traverser” (“the bad lands to cross”) by eighteenth-century French fur trappers, the “Badlands” have long been recognized as a unique area. The Theodore Roosevelt National Park now protects some of the remnants of the Badlands from developments such as mining and cattle grazing. In order to preserve some ... log in or subscribe to read full text