The Badlands: Natural History
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| Located in southwestern South Dakota,
Badlands National Park consists of nearly 244,000 acres of sharply eroded
buttes, pinnacles and spires blended with the largest, protected mixed
grass prairie in the United States. Sixty-four thousand acres are designated
official wilderness. Sage Creek Wilderness is the site of the reintroduction
of the black-footed ferret, the most endangered land mammal in North America.
The Stronghold Unit is co-managed with the Oglala Sioux Tribe and includes
the sites of 1890's Ghost Dances. |
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Established as Badlands National Monument in 1939, the area
was redesignated as a National Park in 1978. Over 11,000 years of human
history pales to the eons old paleontological
resources. Badlands National Park contains the world's richest Oligocene
epoch fossil beds, dating 23 to 35 million years old.
The evolution of mammal species such as the horse, sheep, rhinoceros and
pig can be studied in the Badlands formations.
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