What’s Hidden Under the Sand of Sahara?

the word Sahara usually brings to mind a picture of endless sandy landscapes a caravan of camels is walking along the dunes the Sun is beaming brightly as if for the last time and around you not a soul it seems as if the golden majestic dunes have always been here but this isn't so what secrets does the great desert hide from humanity and what is under its hot sands this is hard to believe but as recently as 6000 years ago the arid desert with an area of more than 9 million square kilometres almost three and a half million square miles was covered with a thick green carpet entire settlements existed and domestic animals grazed where today there's practically nothing but hot sand there were green meadows and lakes rainfall was so abundant that it fed the river tamanrasset carrying its waters across the green sahara to the atlantic ocean the river with numerous tributaries had a length of more than 500 kilometers with 311 miles and would have made the list of the longest rivers in the world in 2015 3-dimensional satellite images help to find the largest Paleo River thanks to these images scientists noticed the smooth edges of the ancient channels of the river hidden under the modern-day desert and in Central Africa there was a lake called Lake mega Chad now nearly a ghost lake of which only the modern Lake Chad remains and once in antiquity this lake was wider than the Caspian Sea extending for almost three hundred ninety thousand square kilometers or a hundred and fifty thousand square miles across the Sahara if the lake existed now it would be the largest on the planet the images published by NASA clearly show how huge it was the lake forever imprinted in a desert landscape like a silent reminder to all of humanity who had a hand in draining the once deep water reservoir but what happened why did this once green and prosperous region suddenly become the most lifeless place on the planet scientists have different explanations for example environmental archeologist David Wright considers livestock to be the main cause of climate change for 1/3 of the African continent sheep cows and goats trampled and consumed local vegetation the soil became more exposed and reflected more sunlight affecting the atmosphere the amount of precipitation decreased and drought began that was the beginning of the end droughts slowly but surely destroyed all the vegetation and the green Sahara turned into a huge desert region about the size of the United States but this doesn't mean that only animals are to blame perhaps cattle farmers were the catalyst for a process that had already begun to destroy the green cover true not everything is so simple in 2018 another team of scientists put forward the hypothesis that the ancient herders on the contrary prolonged the flowering of the green Sahara by another 500 years according to one of the authors of the study seasonal cattle driving and selective grazing helped people maintain a declining ecosystem a third group of scientists blames the Earth's axis having studied the dust precipitating off the coast of West Africa for the last two hundred forty thousand years they've come to the conclusion that the climate of the Sahara and North Africa changes from humid to dry every 20,000 years as tilt of Earth's axis changes its shift affects the distribution of sunlight between seasons the more solar radiation the more active the monsoon and the more precipitation falls during the summer when there's less sunlight the monsoons weaken and a moist climate turns into drought if this is so then after some ten thousand years Meadows will again bloom in the Sahara and animals will graze but the invisible river and the ghost lake are far from being the only mysteries that the majestic desert hides from us earlier in the Mesozoic era the toughest ocean's seed here dividing the ancient continent of Gondwana in Laurasia the ocean receded the continents were divided the plates move and on the surface of the sand it seemed a cemetery of whales remained this place is now called Wadi el Keeton which in Arabic means the valley of the whales you probably will be surprised but modern whales have ancient ancestors bacillus aureus had sharp teeth and hind limbs true their limbs were very small and not suitable for movement they were probably the largest predators of their time because the size of the vasila sores reached 21 meters or 69 feet imagine how scientists were shocked when in the early 20th century they found the remains of ancient whales in the hot desert along with fossils of extinct prehistoric fish snakes turtles crocodiles and manatees probably their first thought was someone must have brought them here but everything turned out to be much more interesting the sands of the Sahara keep other secrets not only did ancient predatory whales hunt there but once upon a time dinosaurs also roamed one of the largest dinosaurs in the world whose age is almost a hundred million years old was found here these were the bones of a herbivorous sauropod which was called peril a Titan stro Mary judging by the fossils this giant could reach 32 meters or a hundred and five feet in length and weigh up to 60 tons and in 2018 under the vast desert sands the bones of another previously unknown dinosaur were found Mansura soros the discovery was like an exploding bomb there was very little data on the last days of the dinosaurs that lived in africa in the Late Cretaceous 100 to 66 million years ago also it turned out that the new species of dinosaur is very similar to its European counterpart so it seems the dinosaur came to Africa from the territory of modern Europe but how is this possible previously scientists were convinced that the ancient Giants could not move between continents after they became separated but this unexpected vine smashed the accepted theories of dinosaur migration the newly discovered species could reach from eight to ten metres or 26 to 33 feet in length and weigh as much as an African bull elephant up to six and a half tons today this find is considered one of the most significant among all discovered remains of new dinosaur species and the amazing discovery of the mansur asuras can us much more information about the fauna of that period but perhaps the most inexplicable mirror of Saharan Africa and one of the major mysteries of the planet is located in Mauritania it's a unique geological formation easily visible from space called the eye of the Sahara or Richat structure is a series of huge concentric rings and has a diameter of about 50 kilometres or 31 miles the object gained world fame after it was discovered in 1965 from the manned spacecraft Gemini 4 since then the mysterious eye haunts scientists all these years they've been looking for the answer to the main question what is the nature of this structure if this is the site of the fall of an ancient meteorite then where's the crater itself and why are no traces of the impact detected if this is the mouth of an extinct volcano that was collapsing inwards for millions of years then why are volcanic rocks completely absent very fantastic theories are also being put forward about an alien landing site or the location of Atlantis here but most of all scientists are inclined to believe that the structure formed as a result of erosion but there's a flaw in this hypothesis the formation ring is too even and regular nowhere else on earth has erosion been able to create anything like this anyway the mysterious eye of the Sahara remains one of the most amazing natural phenomena so whom or what the desert is watching with the help of this I most likely will remain a secret the desert is also silent about the cities and entire civilizations buried under its sands traces of which are recorded by satellites and sometimes discovered by archaeologists once upon a time life was vibrant here portress has stood fields were waiting to be harvested and livestock graze down pastures here wild animals roamed in search of prey and fish splashed in the rivers but everything has changed now the desert is completely inhospitable everyone who tries to explore the vast expanses of the Sahara feels the strength of the sizzling Sun and sandstorms who knows perhaps under the hot dunes the biggest secret of the Sahara is still waiting which it carefully protects from human eyes what do you think it could be write us a note in the comments your like and subscription will be better than any breeze after an exhausting journey through the hot desert this is riddle saying until next time

Channel: Ridddle

Views: 3,942,170

Rating: 4.7783804 out of 5

Keywords: Ridddle, riddle, what if, what, if, what would happened, What Happens If, sci, science, smart, experiment, sahara, what's hidden, What’s Hidden Under

Id: bB4B3vwku74

Length: 10min 49sec (649 seconds)

Published: Fri May 08 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/blackhaz2]

I could watch it if not that f$&!ing background music.