Animal tracks in the dried mud in Death Valley, California
About this photograph
- Creator
- Margery H. Freeman
- Date created
- April 1977
- Location
- Death Valley, California
- License
- This photograph copyright ©1977. All Rights Reserved
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- Search LEARN NC for arid, badlands, Badwater Basin, California, Death Valley, Death Valley National Park, deserts, dry, erosion, lowest point, mountains, national parks, rain, rainstorm, salt, salt flats, sedimentary, and volcanic.
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Animal tracks in the dried mud in Death Valley, California. Occasional, brief rainstorms create a thin veneer of mud that later dries up into cracked plates, preserving the tracks of anything that walked on it when wet.
Death Valley National Park is located east of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. It is home to the lowest point in North America at Badwater, which is 282 feet below sea level, but it also encompasses parts of several mountain ranges. Its highest point is Telescope Peak, at 11,049 feet. Located in an rainshadow exaggerated by the presence of four major mountain ranges between it and the ocean, Death Valley receives less than two inches of rainfall a year and is famous as one of the hottest and driest places in North America. Summer temperatures often hover around 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
