Ruby Beach on the coastline of Olympic in Washington is famous for its impressive sea stacks and tree-topped offshore islands. In the wake of a low-pressure system moving in from the Pacific Ocean, the sunsets can be particularly spectacular. Today’s coastline of...
Fairy Falls of Wahkeena Creek in the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon cascades over mossy basalt, lined with maidenhair ferns that conceal the cataclysmic geological events of this landscape. About 40 million years ago, the Columbia River flowed through a wide valley...
The living rocks in the Hamelin Pool lagoon of Shark Bay in Western Australia convey a vivid impression of what Earth may have looked like at the beginning of life 3500 million years ago. The living rocks are stromatolites. They consist of thin mats of blue-green...
The Marra Mamba banded iron formation of Karijini’s Hamersley Range in northwestern Australia is an archaic natural artwork, created by the first microorganisms that inhabited the early Earth. About 2500 million years ago, the shallow seas off the coast of the...
Hamersley Gorge with its picturesque Spa Pool in Karijini National Park in northwestern Australia opens a window into the beginning of Earth, into a time when bacteria were the only inhabitants of our young planet. These colorful layers of rock are banded iron...
