Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness: an amazing landscape that seems taken from another planet

@ElentirENG ES 2·04·2024 · 3:54 0

There are places where erosion and the composition of the soil itself give rise to images that seem worthy of a science fiction movie.

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One of those places is called Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness and is in San Juan County, New Mexico (United States).

It is a place located in the middle of a desert, with wastelands and what are known as hoodoos or fairy chimneys, which are like enormous needles formed with soft rocks that have larger ones at the top. hard (photo by John Fowler).

How has this curious landscape been formed? Well, due to both wind and water erosion, both in the aforementioned fairy chimneys and in the lands themselves, which are made of sandstone (photo source: PXHere.com).

The peculiarity is that Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness is an important dinosaur site. In fact, it was explored for the first time in 1921 by paleontologist Charles Hazelius Sternberg (1850-1943). In fact, this place gave its name to a type of dinosaur, the Ahshislepelta, a huge herbivore found at this site (photo by Bureau of Land Management).

In May 1992, the area was declared a protected site, a demarcation that covers 26.5 square kilometers in this area. This protection not only serves to preserve the landscape, but also to prohibit the collection of fossils without permission (photo by Bureau of Land Management).

The hoodoos of Ah-Shi-Sle-Pah Wilderness can reach the height of a building, creating a spectacular site that attracts many tourists, both day and night (photo by John Fowler).

You can see under these lines the location of this beautiful place on Google Maps (photo by John Fowler)

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Main photo: John Fowler / Wikimedia.