Deserts are not the most comfortable place to be in. Very few can survive the dry air, lack of rain, little vegetation, and intense heat.
Now, can you imagine a desert landscape that would have once sustained as much life as a lake! It’s true.
In fact, scientists have found remains of freshwater plants and animals in the driest place on the planet, the Atacama Desert.
Where Is Atacama?
The Atacama Desert of Chile and Peru stretches almost parallel along the Pacific Coast for about 600 miles (1,000km). The average elevation (height) is 13,000 feet (4km) making it the highest desert in the world.
Outside the polar regions, this area is also one of the coldest deserts with temperatures averaging between 0 and 25 degrees Celsius. The Atacama Desert is also known as the driest place on Earth, for it gets an average of only 15 millimeters of rainfall per year. And in some areas, it doesn’t rain at all.
At first sight, this piece of land is made of mostly sand and salt. But underneath the sand, researchers have found organic remains of plants and animals that can only be found in or near freshwater sources. And that’s not all - they have also found evidence of human settlement in this region.
Archeologists believe that people could have migrated through this desert. But there’s also a possibility that people could have lived here between 17,000 and 9,000 years ago when water was plenty. However, scientists don't believe that direct rainfall in the desert region caused the water to appear. Instead, they think the answer is the Central Andean Pluvial Events, the theory that at one point, there was more rain in the Andes Mountains, and that water trickled into the Atacama Desert.
Is This True Of Other Deserts?
Could other deserts also have once supported more life than they do today? The answer is yes.
Before they became deserts, these environments were suitable for plant and animal life. For example, cave paintings found in the Sahara Desert depict images of crocodiles indicating that the Sahara might have been a swamp 6000 years ago.
The Great Victoria Desert in Australia would have been a rainforest a few million years ago. Even Antarctica (yes, Antarctica is considered a desert!) might have been covered by a temperate rainforest 3 million years ago. It is indeed amazing to see how dead plants and animals tell tales about our Earth's past!
