NatGeo News Watch: Search Results

Nat Geo photographer Paul Nicklen shares secrets of polar wildlife pictures

Posted on November 19, 2009 | 0 Comments

Tags:

National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen's YouTube video "Face-Off With a Deadly Predator," an account of his scary encounter with a leopard seal in the Antarctic, has been downloaded more than a million times.

In this subsequent video interview with NatGeo News Watch, below, Nicklen shares his thoughts about leopard seals--and other polar predators he has studied since he was a boy growing up in a small Inuit community in the Canadian Arctic.

He talks about the patience and time needed to make the photographs of polar predators for ten National Geographic Magazine articles and for his new National Geographic book, Polar Obsession.

Video by David Braun

A large female leopard seal greets photographer Göran Ehlmé. Anvers Island, Antarctica (p. 161 of Paul Nicklen's new book, Polar Obsession.)

A leopard seal feeds Paul Nicklen a penguin. Antarctic Peninsula (p. 36)

Growing up in the Arctic, Nicklen said, "We didn't have a television...telephone...radio...so all of my entertainment came in the form of playing outside, and that meant being around animals...seeing my first polar bear when I was five years old.

"So you really learn from the time you are young how these animals work, what makes them tick. You learn about social hierarchy, and then most of all, the best thing you learn is their connection to the ecosystem," he said.

Looking towards an uncertain future, a huge male bear triggers a camera trap, taking his own picture. Leifdefjorden, Spitsbergen, Norway (p.239)

All this information plus a college degree in marine biology taught Nicklen how to approach and get up close to animals, to use body language to communicate with them, and devote many hours to get them used to his presence before getting into the water with them.

A large bull walrus returns to the shores of Prins Karl Forland after diving and feeding on clams. Svalbard, Norway (p. 150)

What people don't realize when they see his pictures, Nicklen says, is the sometimes days, weeks or months he needed to get the animals to care less about his presence.

Narwhals dive deep under the ice to feed on Arctic cod, then return to the surface to breathe and raise their tusks high in the air. Lancaster Sound, Nunavut, Canada (p. 103)

"The narwhals story...a chapter in the book, took me 15 years to try to figure it out," Nicklen said. The project involved working with the Inuit, buying an ultralight plane, flying out to the remote pack ice in the Arctic, "and finally, in one day, getting all those images for that narwhal story. It's just time and patience."

Polar Obsession (National Geographic Books; November, 2009; $50; hardcover) is a showcase of Nicklen's best pictures and an opportunity for him to share important insights into animal behavior, the fragile polar environment and climate change that threatens the ice and its inhabitants.

In the Arctic spring, meltwater channels drain toward and down a seal hole, returning to the sea. (p. 71)

"The polar regions are disappearing quickly, and I want my photo essays to stand as a reminder of what is at stake. It is my mission to bring the rare, remote and threatened to caring people who can enjoy and help protect these lands and creatures," Nicklen writes in his introduction.

The book includes 150 of Nicklen's most spectacular images from the polar regions. Elephant seals, leopard seals, whales, walruses, narwhals, polar bears, penguins, albatrosses, petrels, arctic cod, and krill, are among the cast of characters he captures through his lens. To make these photos took many years of thinking and planning and sometimes many hours of waiting in difficult conditions for the right moment.

A kittiwake soars in front of a large iceberg. Svalbard, Norway (p. 29)

In essays introducing each chapter, Nicklen describes the ice fields, floes and frozen seas that are the backdrop to his images.

A young polar bear leaps between ice floes. Barents Sea, Svalbard, Norway (p.16). Click on the feature "Ice Paradise" for more photos from Nicklen's Svalbard assignment for National Geographic Magazine.

"Nicklen has risked his life many times in the 20 years he has been documenting the polar regions," says the National Geographic news release about this book. "He has crashed his ultralight airplane, fallen through the sea ice, been lost in blizzards, bitten by fur seals, attacked by a walrus and an 8,000-pound elephant seal, charged by a grizzly bear and sniffed through the thin fabric wall of a tent by a polar bear."

A gentoo penguin chick peeks, checking for patrolling leopard seals before tempting fate. Port Lockroy, Antarctic Peninsula (p. 166)

"If I really want people to care about polar species, my images have to be wild and raw," he writes. "I want people to feel what it's like to be in the water, swimming three feet from a polar bear. I want them to experience what it's like to be offered a penguin as food by a leopard seal. Only then will they really care about that habitat and that species."

Paul Nicklen emerges numb from the cold after an hour under the ice. Admiralty Inlet, Nunavut, Canada (p. 15)

Mother bear and two-year-old cub drift on glacier ice. Hudson Strait, Nunavut, Canada (p. 77)

Included in the book is a gear list detailing the enormous amount of equipment that accompanies Nicklen on his assignments, "likely more equipment than any other natural history photographer on the planet," because Nicklen shoots above and below water.

He usually travels with 14 to 20 cases and hockey duffel bags weighing between 60 pounds and 70 pounds each. "Getting to and from location with all the gear is often the worst and hardest part of the assignment," he writes. A list of some of the equipment Nicklen is currently using can also be found on his Web site.

Paul Nicklen on assignment. Lewes Lake, Yukon Territory, Canada. (not in book)

Inside the battle to save Earth's climate

Posted on November 9, 2009 | 0 Comments

Tags:

Climate scientist Stephen H. Schneider could easily say "I told you so," now that data pour in on an almost daily basis to prove what he has been warning about for many years: Greenhouses gases we are pumping into the atmosphere are disrupting Earth's climate, threatening our way of life, if not our survival.

Instead, he remains hopeful that it's not too late to do something about it.

Schneider, along with his colleagues on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore, won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to enlighten the public about human-induced climate change and to inspire action to confront it. The Stanford University climatologist is also a National Geographic Fellow.

In SCIENCE AS A CONTACT SPORT: Inside the Battle to Save Earth's Climate (National Geographic Books; ISBN: 978-1-4262-0540-8; on-sale date Nov. 3, 2009; $28; hardcover), Schneider chronicles the infighting and backroom negotiations, the courage of some and the ignorance and duplicity of others, that have inhibited the world community from implementing solutions sooner to combat the dangers of a warming Earth.

Watch this video interview with Schneider, in which he discusses why it is difficult to follow the raging debate about climate change, where to get reliable information, his hopes for COP15 (the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen from December 7 to 18),and what steps governments and individuals can can take toward positive action.

Professor Schneider's Web site: climatechange.net

Video interview of Stephen Schneider by David Braun

Decades may have been lost and most of the early, dire predictions are happening--sea levels rising; glaciers melting; unprecedented heat waves and wildfires; intensification of hurricanes as they move over warmed oceans; and arctic sea ice rapidly thinning all year long and increasingly disappearing in summer.

Further delay may result in irreversible conditions, including melted ice sheets, redrawn coastlines and species driven to extinction.

Steps toward positive action

But Schneider remains hopeful, offering a realistic prescription for how governments and individuals can take steps toward positive action.

For governments, that means creating energy-efficiency standards for buildings and machines; investing in clean technology research; cap and trade or carbon taxes; geoengineering schemes to try to remove CO2 from the air and help prevent some of the large impacts of climate change; and smart growth planning.

Individuals can avoid unnecessary automobile use; conserve energy at home; buy energy-efficient cars and appliances; eat more local foodstuffs and less imported foods; show up at city council meetings to advocate for a greener town; and support local politicians who stand up for sustainability.

In addition to his collective share of a Nobel Peace Prize, Schneider is winner of a MacArthur "genius grant" and has been an expert adviser to officials in the Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Obama administrations. He is the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, a professor in the Department of Biology, and a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.

National Geographic Books provided a copy of SCIENCE AS A CONTACT SPORT: Inside the Battle to Save Earth's Climate for this entry.

Photography book documents "30-year portrait" of one American family

Posted on November 5, 2009 | 0 Comments

Tags:

When newspaper photojournalist Pam Spaulding set out to photograph a year in the life of a new mother in 1977, little did she know where the project would take her.

Three decades on she was still photographing the McGarveys, a Louisville, Kentucky family that had grown to five, following daily activities and documenting milestones like births, graduations, marriages, and burials. She was chronicling the family's passage through life.

What became a lifelong passion, perhaps an obsession, for Spaulding has yielded a remarkable archive of photographs that tracks not only the everyday lives of one family, but also the granular details of the changing American way of life.

The only comparable work in the annals of documentary photography is the fascinating 25-year portrait of the four Brown sisters by Nicholas Nixon, says veteran National Geographic photographer Sam Abell. "But those portrait sessions are a once-a-year occurrence. The McGarvey project is of another order, and we are unlikely to see anything like it again."

Spaulding's intimate 30-year photographic study of a single middle-class family from Louisville is represented in An American Family: Three Decades with the McGarveys (National Geographic Focal Point; October, 2009; $35).

How did Pam Spaulding link up with the McGarveys, I asked her in an interview. "I called around Lamaze instructors to get the names of first-time parents. That's how I met John and Judy McGarvey. They were willing to listen to my idea about photographing the life of a new mother for a year. They agreed to a trial period. Then they never got rid of me," Spaulding said.

David, center, says the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time in kindergarten. Three of his classmates in the picture will stay with him through eighth grade. September 1982 (p. 26)

Photo by Pam Spaulding

What developed was a remarkable relationship, in which the photographer became all but invisible to the McGarveys, even inside their home. Her lens became so familiar it went unnoticed. Years later, when the children looked at the book of photographs of their lives, they remarked that they had not realized that the photographer had been among them on this and that occasion.

"I wanted to make a timeless picture of culture, a vsual history of what we Americans were like in this period of time," Spaulding said. "Already you can see in these photographs how things we used have changed, such as pay phones that have since started to disappear. Looking at these pictures also gives you a sense of how time changes bodies and relationships, seen when the same people are photographed over many years in the same places."

Spaulding has children of her own, but she has not documented their lives as she has those of the McGarvey family. "I couldn't be both an observer and a participant with my own family," she explained. "The photos I made of my own children were the photos any mother would make. I was looking at the McGarveys differently, from a side and through a wider lens that included the context of place and time."

Judy dresses Sara for her fourth birthday party, which featured a Cinderella theme including a neighbor playing the fairy godmother. May 1987 (p. 210)

Photo by Pam Spaulding

How did the children react to Spaulding's omnipresence in their lives, the woman pointing the camera at them even in some awkward moments? "I think they accepted me and liked what I was doing," the photographer said. "Why wouldn't they? I was there for them at their ball games and school plays."

Over the years the McGarveys saw few of the pictures Spaulding made of the family. She once overheard one of the children telling a friend not to be self-conscious about the photographer, who apparently shot many pictures, but never processed any of them. "They were generally pleased when they finally got to see the pictures," Spaulding said. "Although Morgan couldn't believe I published one of him sitting on the pot."

The family welcomes David home from a tour in Iraq. John, who rarely shows emotion, held back tears when the crowd at the airport broke into applause. November 2006 (p. 27)

Photo by Pam Spaulding

As Spaulding blended into the family's lives she came to know and appreciate their traditions and rituals. The project also changed her photography. "Shooting for a newspaper you want your pictures to be clean, very simple, and covering emotion. You shoot tight pictures. For the McGarveys I constantly had to tell myself to stand back, to shoot a wider scene. It was hard because it was not what I was doing on a daily basis for the newspaper."

So is the McGarvey project finally over? "No," Spaulding said. "I was there to photograph the birth of Sara, so how could I not be there to photograph the birth of her first child?"

Pam Spaulding

Photo courtesy of National Geographic Books

National Geographic Books provided a review copy of An American Family: Three Decades with the McGarveys for this entry.

The most influential species of all evolution

Posted on November 4, 2009 | 0 Comments

Tags:

As we observe the 150th anniversary this month of the first publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, a new book reviews evolution and ranks the top one hundred most influential species of all time.

Homo sapiens is not at the top of the list.

In fact, we humans, who like to imagine that we are the masters of the universe, don't even rank in the top five.

The most influential species (defined as the species that has most changed life on Earth) is ... the earthworm.

Photo courtesy USDA

"According to Charles Darwin, no living thing has had such a profound impact on history as has the earthworm," says Christopher Lloyd, a history scholar at Cambridge University, UK, and author of What on Earth Evolved?: 100 Species that Changed the World (Bloomsbury, November 2009, $45).

After considering the most important species that evolved before the ascent of human civilization, from the beginning of life on Earth until about 12,000 years ago, and then mulling all the species that have been successful since 12,000 years ago--that is the species that have flourished because of modern humans--Lloyd finds that he agrees with Charles Darwin: The earthworm is indeed the most influential species in the history of the planet.

Descendants of sea worms that existed five hundred million years ago, earthworms came ashore with the first invertebrate invasions of the land, making their living in damp soils broken up by bacteria, fungi and the roots of colonizing plants, Lloyd writes. "These earthworms have been ploughing up the earth, ventilating the soil and nourishing terrestrial ecosystems with their excrement ever since."

The survivors of five mass extinctions, earthworms have had profound impacts on human history, Lloyd says.

"Were it not for their continuous regeneration of soils around damp river valleys such as the Nile, Indus, and Euphrates, early agricultural societies in Egypt, India, and Mesopotamia could never have succeeded in building humanity's first large-scale urban communities."

"Wherever eathworms plough, people thrive. When worms perish, societies collapse."

Throughout human history earthworms have unintentionally but undeniably triggered the rise of civilizations, Lloyd adds. "Wherever eathworms plough, people thrive. When worms perish, societies collapse."

The European earthworm (Lumbricus terrestris) is probably the most prolific and invasive species in the world, Lloyd says.

"Its success is largely thanks to the spread of Europeans, c. 1600 onwards.

"Immigrant farmers inadvertently brought these earthworms, sometimes called 'night crawlers,' in everything from the soil in their potted plants and their horses' hooves, to the treads of their boots and the wheels of their wagons.

"Today there is hardly a region of North America where Europe's earthworms have not made a home for themselves. There they continue to plough, ventilate and fertilize the soil to the general benefit of life in and on the Earth."

Before Man, After Man

What on Earth Evolved? is divided into two sections--Before Man and After Man. Starting with the early Earth, when loose strands of genetic code swarmed the planet, Lloyd explores the most significant lifeforms that evolved in the deep oceans and then wriggled ashore to become pioneers of life on land. In the second section, the author shows how co-evolution of humans and numerous other key species transformed Earth over the past 12,000 years.

A newspaper science and technology correspondent in a previous career, Lloyd has produced an accessible read, guiding the reader through capsule biographies of a hundred of the most influential species. They include slime, sea scorpions, dragonflies, potatoes, ants, tulips, sheep, dogs, cats, coca, opium, poppies, and grapes.

He ranks the species into a table of influence, revealing those that have most changed life on Earth. Academics will no doubt debate the selection and process, but Lloyd makes a compelling, albeit concise, case for each species. The full list of the hundred most influential species may be seen on the book's Web site, or in the book itself.

Covering all of life in one book would be impossible, of course, but Lloyd has taken an interesting approach to some of the most marvelous products of evolution, leading to renewed appreciation of how much life has succeeded through both competition and collaboration.

Here is Lloyd's top ten most influential species of all evolution:

Evolution's top ten species

1. Earthworm
Made it possible for humans to cultivate the planet, settle, and build civilizations.

2. Algae
Without the countless forms of microscopic algae, larger forms of sea life would never have been able to evolve. All land plants are descended from ancestral forms of algae.

3. Cyanobacteria
Plants, trees, and animals all owe their existence to the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere and oceans, supplies of which were originally established by cyanobacteria, a photosynthesizing bacterium that breaks down carbon dioxide and excretes oxygen.

4. Rhizobia
Organisms capable of "fixing" atmospheric nitrogen into soluble nitrates that fertilize the soil so that plants and trees can thrive.

5. Lactobacillus
Bacteria that live inside the human colon, providing beneficial services such as assistance with digestion of milk and protection against harmful bacteria and organisms such as viruses and fungi.

6. Homo sapiens
Humans did not crack the No. 1 position on Lloyd's list, but we merit five pages in his 416-page book and we are the only mammal in the top 10. We lose points chiefly as a result of our recent evolutionary emergence.

We may not rank as the most influential species in this analysis, but our impact pervades the past 12,000 years as we learned to farm animals and plants and harness mch of the resources of the planet. In that time humans have had a profound impact on many other species, nurturing those useful to us and driving many that are of little value to us into isolation and even into extinction. Our impact on evolution is clearly in its early phases.

7. Stony corals
Coral reefs are powerful places for the natural conservation and co-operation of species, resulting in the construction of massive undewrwater mountains that house an extraordinary diversity of life.

8. Yeast
It is almost exclusively thanks to the action of this single-celled microscopic fungus that humanity has been able to enjoy everything from leavened bread to fine wine. Some of our best prospects for fuelling sustainable industrialization and transportation in the future are based on ethanol, a by-product of yeast.

9. Influenza
One of humanity's biggest ever killers and still the largest threat to populations on Earth.

10. Penicillium
A naturally occurring antibiotic that has transformed modern medicine and substantially increased human populations.

Bloomsbury Publishing provided a copy of What on Earth Evolved? for this entry.

Seahorses: Myth and Reality of an Odd Fish

Posted on September 13, 2009 | 1 Comments

Tags:

Seahorses are familiar and loved as the peculiar upright fish that graces bathroom tiles, beach towels, cartoon movies, children's books, and even jewelry. That's when we're not grinding them into powder for traditional medicines.

Pregnant seahorse males, bellies big with embryos, rest in seagrass.

NGS photo by Paul Zahl

Although some people own seahorses in private aquariums, the great bulk of humanity has never seen a live one in the wild. For the most part they're tiny, solitary, and adept at hiding in coral reefs or seagrass. Yet they live in many parts of the world, and can be found even in fairly close proximity to popular beaches.

Marine biologist Helen Scales, a regular contributor to National Geographic News, has written a compelling book about seahorses that makes the case not only for these odd fish but also for the entire ocean.

"Seahorses may be incongruous and small, they may hide in quiet corners of the coast away from all but the keenest of eyes, but they can play an important role in encouraging us to protect parts of their vast ocean home," Scales writes in "Poseidon's Steed: The Story of Seahorses, from Myth to Reality" (Gotham Books, August 2009, U.S.$24.00).

"Increasingly, seahorses are being used as catalysts for conservation initiatives; they are being held aloft as poster species to help muster support for protecting the oceans.

"They are touchstones to remind people of the vulnerable, beautiful creatures that live there, giving us a reason to care."

Scales describes in absorbing detail the prehensile tail seahorses use to tie themselves to a perch, a pair of chameleon eyes capable of moving independently of each other, a coat that can change colors to blend invisibly into the background, and a long tube of a snout to suck in passing plankton like a powerful vacuum cleaner.

The seahorse is the only fish with a neck and the only species on Earth in which the male gives birth.

NGS photo by Robert Sisson

Seahorses, one might imagine, are masterpieces of evolution, reaching their unique morphology and niche in the web of life through many twists and turns over millions of years.

The origins, distribution, and life history of the seahorse is fascinating in and of itself, and Scales does a nice job of detailing all this.

But she really comes into her own when she delves into the mythology based on the seahorse (the title of the book is a reference to ancient art of the Greek god Poseidon's chariot being pulled by seahorses) and to the thousand-year tradition of using seahorses in Chinese medicine as cures for flagging libido and a variety of other ailments.

It's the booming trade in traditional medicine that is the biggest threat to seahorses. Some 25 million seahorses are pulled from the oceans every year, according to Scales.

Much of the harvest is bycatch in the shrimp fisheries, which use trawl nets to scrape all living things from the seafloor. Seahorses are picked out of the writhing heaps of shrimp, sponges, and other marine animals gathered by the nets, then set aside for sale to the traditional healing trade. It can be a lucrative sideline for fishers.

Five pygmy sea horses range in color from dull brown to golden yellow.

NGS photo of seahorses by Paul Zahl

Scales provides a nuanced and thoughtful analysis of traditional medicine in general, branching her analysis into the pros and cons of farming endangered species (yes, there are seahorse farms, and 18 seahorse species now live in aquariums) and she gives a fair hearing to those who argue that a billion users of Chinese traditional medicine cannot all be wrong about its efficacy.

But it's clear that irresponsible fishing practices, and an insatiable appetite for rare wild species as traditional medicine, are the biggest threats to seahorses and countless other marine animals.

NGS photo by Paul Zahl

Other threats to seahorses include habitat destruction because of coastal development and runoff.

A warming world could raise ocean temperatures, and also raise sea levels that could make what are now shallow seas deeper and darker. The changes could come too rapidly for many species to adapt, especially animals like seahorses which may not be able to relocate to cooler latitudes fast enough.

NGS photo of seahorse by Paul Zahl

One of the rarest seahorses is the Cape seahorse, also known as the Knysna seahorse. They occur in only a small part of the coast of South Africa and are vulnerable to a major natural disaster. Watch this National Geographic video about them:

There is some good news for seahorses.

Scales reports on Project Seahorse in the Philippines as an example of artisinal fishers taking the initiative to zone off and protect ocean sanctuaries where species, including seahorses, can recover and restock adjacent fishing areas.

Cleaning up rivers has also had an important impact on seahorses. An example of this is the Thames River in England, which has recovered to the point where seahorses are being seen again as far upriver as London for the first time in many years. (Read the about this in the National Geographic News report Rare Seahorses Found in River Thames.)

NGS photo of seahorse by Paul Zahl

One of the most enjoyable features of "Poseidon's Steed" are the many digressions. There can be few, if any, aspects of seahorses in mythology, history, or the popular culture that Scales does not investigate.

Thorny cirri, skin branchings, sprout from a pygmy sea horse's head.

NGS photo by Paul Zahl

Everything Scales writes about is well researched and explained, and the additional details in the book's comprehensive footnotes speak not only to her academic diligence but also her journalistic professionalism to provide context and explanation.

The bibliography runs for an impressive number of pages. I've never read a book devoted entirely to seahorses before, and I may never read another one. But I am very glad I read this one. It feels like a lucid distillation of a lot of research and careful thought.

My one disappointment with the book is that it lacks great color photography. I know from our news coverage that seahorses can make gorgeous photos. For an example of this, look at the images in SEA LIFE PHOTOS: Five New Pygmy Seahorse Species Found (captions written by Helen Scales).

I was expecting a book that dealt with many aspects of a delightful and enigmatic fish. I found all that and so much more.

Scales has provided much useful information and context for the wider issues of the long relationship we have had--and continue to have--with our oceans and the animals that live in them.

"Poseidon's Steed" takes a look at the oceans from the point of view of the seahorse, and in doing so gives us a profound appreciation of what's a stake for everything that lives in or depends on the sea, ourselves included.

Horses of Neptune by Walter Crane (1892)

You might also like these National Geographic News stories:

SEA LIFE PHOTOS: Five New Pygmy Seahorse Species Found
The Walea pygmy seahorse is one of five species named in a flurry of recent seahorse discoveries from coral reefs in the Red Sea and Indonesia. All five are less than an inch tall (2.5 centimeters) and are among the tiniest known vertebrates.

PHOTOS: Oldest Seahorses Found; Help Solve Mystery
The oldest seahorse fossils discovered to date have been uncovered in Slovenia, including a two-inch-long (five-centimeter-long) adult female Hippocampus sarmaticus fossil.

Seahorses are master mimics that use their cryptic colors and upright posture to blend in with plants. When and why the animals developed these unusual characteristics has been a mystery--until now, scientists say.

Seahorse in a Sea Fan (Best Photo Contest)
This exquisitely camouflaged pygmy seahorse on a sea fan in the Malaysian section of the South Pacific island of Borneo won first place prize in an amateur underwater-photography contest.

National Geographic News stories by Helen Scales:

Sharks Repelled by Metal That Creates Electric Field

Coral Reefs Vanishing Faster Than Rain Forests

SEA LIFE PHOTOS: Five New Pygmy Seahorse Species Found

Giant Shark Mystery Solved: Unexpected Hideout Found

Oceans Becoming Acidic Ten Times Faster Than Thought

Antarctic Fish "Hibernate" in Winter

Gardening Fish "Domesticate" Crops of Algae

South Africa's Karoo Heartland Discovered

Posted on July 12, 2009 | 0 Comments

Tags:

South Africa's Karoo region is a sprawling heartland that separates the grasslands and industrial northern and eastern parts of the country from the vineyards and craggy coastal belt of the Cape.

Travelers speeding by road or rail between Cape Town and Johannesburg see little more than scrubland broken by flattop hills South Africans call koppies. Small towns flash by, seemingly assembled from a standard construction catalog of churches, general trading stores, and hotel-saloons to provide services to outlying sheep ranches every fifty miles or so.

It's not unlike the arid interiors of Australia and North America, you might imagine.

But traversing the Karoo via the main transportation corridor reveals nothing about the region's distant past, when it was lush and swampy and the stomping ground of dinosaurs.

There is also little to indicate that the modern greater Karoo is a special and fascinating place.