ry Places When you hear the word desert, do you think of a hot, dry place where nothing grows and everything is covered by sand? Some deserts fit this description, but you might be surprised to learn that not all deserts are sandy or completely barren or even hot. Dry, Dry, Dry The one word that describes all deserts is dry. ‘The essential feature of any desert is its dryness, or aridity. One way of assessing the dryness of by measuring how many inches of precipitation it gets in an average year. Most deserts get less than 10 inches of precipitation a year. Compare neager 10 inches with Precipitation Re av moisture in the form of rain, snow, preci hail, or sleet some major American cities. New York City receives about 42 inches of precipitation every year; Chicago gets 35 inches; New Orleans, 61 inches; San Francisco, nearly 20 inches; Dallas, 29 inches; even hot and dry Los Angeles receives nearly 15 inches. Even when it does rain in the desert, very litele water from the rain can be used by plants and animals. Sudden thunderstorms cause heavy rainfall, but the water quickly washes away in flash floods. A light shower occasionally develops over a desert area, but, because the air is so dry, most of the rain evaporates before it touches the ground. ‘The strength of the sun is also a factor. When temperatures are very high, as they are in many deserts, evaporation speeds up, so the water has less time to soak into the parched soil. Desert Temperatures Many deserts are hot as well as dry. Not surprisingly, deserts near the equator tend to be the hottest. In the Sahara in Africa, daytime temperatures routinely soar well above 100° Fahrenheit (F). The highest temperature ever recorded was in the northern Sahara, where thermometers once reached 136°R. The highest temperature in the United States was not much cooler: 134°F was measured at Death Valley in California. Deserts far from the equator do not have the scorchingly hot temperatures of the Sahara, Indeed, during the winter, these deserts can freezing cold. The average winter epee the Gobi in northern China is 10° to 15°E And there are even colder deserts farther north. One thing that both “hor” and “cold” deserts have in common is a dramatic change between daytime and nighttime temperatures, At night, the temperature in a hot desert can drop any- where from 30° to 70°F. Clouds keep warm ai near the ground. Desert skies are often cloudless So at night all the heat rises into the sky, leavine the desert much colder than it is in the daytin. inte day ;Desert Landforms We usually think of deserts as full of sand dunes. Some deserts do contain vast seas of sand, bur other deserts have little or no sand, Only about 2 percent of North American deserts are covered with sand. The Sahara, famous for its sand dunes, is only about 10 percent sand covered. Just as deserts can exhibit a wide range of temperatures, so they can contain many different types of landforms. Deserts can have mountains, plateaus, or plains. Some are covered with gravel, bare bedrock, or sand. Sometimes the desert landscape is scarred and crisscrossed with ravines, gullies, and canyons caused by rushing water from flash floods. On those rare occasions when rain does fall, the water runs downhill, carving a path through the thin soil. Eventually the path turns into a ditch, the ditch into a gully, and the gully into a ravine. Desert winds also shape the landscape. The wind blows whatever thin topsoil there is away, leaving behind sand, rock, or gravel. po aeeake acne rears DESERT *ATAGONIAN DESERT The keyie Gen the ability to adapt to the en ‘The giant saguaro (suh WAR oh grows in the deserts of southern northern Mexico. To survive in the desert, the cactus has adapted to the environment in several ways. Its stem is fleshy and thick, allowing it to store enormous amounts of water. It has no leaves that could lose moisture. And it spreads its roots in a wide area near the surface of the soil. This enables ic to absorb as much water as possible during the infrequent rains. PACIFIC OCEAN AFRICA INDIAN OCEANa and other deserts. ods of time without drinking. The North American kangaroo rat is Camels live in the Sah Camels can go for long pe even more ideally adapted to desert life. It can survive its entire lifetime without sipping a drop of water. It gets moisture from seeds and plant es, which contain small amounts of water. However, its primary adaptation is the special water recycling system in its own body: lea The kangaroo rat's kidneys recycle water internally. The animal loses very little water through natural processes; when a kangaroo rat has to relieve itself; it leaves behind not a stream of liquid urine but a patch of crystals. Many desert animals, including rats, mice, squirrels, and lizards, are nocturnal. They avoid the harsh heat of the daytime by burrowing deep into the ground vocabulary and coming out nocturnal active only at night. or awake at night or taking place during People too the night have learned how to survive in the desert. Over the years, we have learned that even the driest deserts often have a few locations where there is water. A desert place with good, drinkable water is called an oasis. An oasis has water for drinking and growing plants. People have learned how to travel across deserts and how to protect themselves ftom the heat, wind, and cold, Native Americans have carved out a living in the American deserts of the Southwest. People live in the great deserts of Africa and Asia too. If nothing else, the desert environment has made these people tough and strong. Why do people continue to go into the desert, even though it can be a dangerous place for human beings? For thousands of years, people have been attracted to the desert. Some go in search of gold and other minerals, such as oil. Some go for spiritual reasons, like the ancient i shets of the Bible, who roamed the desert ee to be alone with their God. Others go for the warm, dry weather. Still others are simply attracted to the mystery of the desert, its silence the beauty of its barren rocks and sand, and its clear night skies filled with millions of stars. Shrinking and Growing Desert Over the years, humans have found ways to transform the desert by bringing in water and making the desert bloom. Some Native ‘Americans of the Southwest used irrigation to bring water to their crops. Today irrigation is more important than at any time in the past. People have built gigantic dams and transported water hundreds of miles to places where it is needed. They have turned desert areas in the southwestern United States, Israel, and Egypt into population centers with prosperous farms and big cities. In other parts of the world, however, desert areas are growing. In some parts of Africa, desertification is a major problem. African farmers in need of farmland have cleared and planted semi-arid lands near the edges of the Sahara. When farm animals nibble away the plants in these areas and farmers use the scattered brush for fuel, there is little or nothing left to hold back the winds. Often these winds blow away the thin topsoil and blow in desert sand. So although desert areas may be shrinking in one part of the world, they are ‘ growing in another. Today, about 20 percent of c the world is desert. Changes in weather Patterns, il together with changes in the ways people treat 8 the land, will determine if that number shrinks, y t desertification the A growth or expansion of deserts due to human activities semi-arid receiving 10-12 inches of annual Precipitation and ge supporting only short grass ‘grows, or stays the same. #he Sahara A caravan of camels makes its way across the vast sea of sand, following a route between shifting dunes that sometimes rise several hundred feet high. The camels trudge along at a steady two miles per hour, each carrying nearly 400 pounds of salt from the salt mines in the desert. For thousands of years camel caravans have carried goods across the Sahara. Even today, camel caravans go places in the Sahara that trucks cannot reach. Hot, Hot, Hot The heat is brutal. The sun is high overhead, and the sand is reflecting its heat. Fortunately, camels are designed for this kind of heat. Their long legs keep their bodies well above the burning sand, their stomachs hold lots of water, and their humps contain fat which can be used for energy when food supplies are short. But the humps have begun to sag, a sign the camels have gone too long without food. The caravan leaders are not worried. They know that just over the horizon is an oasis, where they and their animals can rest in the shade and replenish their food and water supplies. The camels can each drink as much as 25 gallons of water, and their humps will firm up when they graze at the oasis, The food and water they take in at the oasis will be enough to last for about a week. “The Sahara is a patchwork desert of rocky mountains, salt flats, gravel plains, and sand seas thar stretches about 3,000 miles across Africa from the Atlantic Ocean in the west (0 the Red Sea in the east. It is 1,200 miles from north tosouth and cove ss three and a half million square miles—an area as large as the United States. Daytime temperatures in the summer have been recorded as high as 136°F—and that does not take into account how hot it feels when the sun beats down! But like most deserts, the Sahara does not hold the daytime heat, and nighttime temperatures can sometimes drop to freezing during the cooler months of the year. The Sahara is dryer than most deserts, with an average rainfall of less than four inches per year, but there are many years in which no rain falls in some parts of the desert. Neverthe- less, the Sahara does have widely-scattered perma- nent water sources, such as oases. And the world’s longest river, the Nile, runs through the eastern part of this largest-of-all deserts. Despite its apparent bar- renness, the Sahara supports a variety of plant and animal life. Many plants have specialized root systems that reach deep into the earth to find water. Animals large and small inhabie the Sahara. ‘There ate antelopes that rarely drink water but get their moisture from the shrubs on which they feed. Gazelles, wild mountain sheep, and the small fennec fox—whose large ears help keep it cool by radiating heat from its body—make the Sahara home. Except for the Nile river valley, the Sahara is very sparsely populated. Only two and a half million people live in the rest of this vast desert. The Kalahari Desert Far to the south of the Sahara, on the other side of the equator, a young lioness and her mate feast on their recent kill, a wildebcest brought Members of the San are shown here storing water from a water hole in hollowed out ostrich shells. down near a water hole where the wildebeest had gone to drink. The animals are in the gam reserve in the center of the Kalahari desert Unlike the scorched earth of the Sahara, the Kalahari has a rich assortment of plants and wildlife. Because of th times referred to asa “thirstland rather than a desert. , it is some The Kalahari is a large basin, covering an area al most as large as the stat of Texas and lying in the ceneral part of southern Africa. As in other deserts, rain is scarce here and does not fall in predictable patterns. Most of the Kalahari averages about five inches of rain per year. Yet some parts get more than 15 inches, which usually is enough moisture to support a variety of wildlife—wildebeests, antelopes, jackals, elephants, giraffes, zebras, and many small animals, birds, and reptiles. Over thousands of years, one group of people aalled the San (or Bushman) learned to adapt remarkably well to the dry conditions of the Kalahari. The San People The San learned how to find and preserve water. They used ostrich eggs as storage containess Ostrich eggs are the largest eggs laid by any bird. One ostrich egg can hold as much liquid as ewo dozen chicken eggs. The San made a pinhole at each end of an ostrich egg. ‘Then they blew out the insides, which they used for food. After a rail they filled the hollow eggshells with water and tightly plugged the two ends, Then they buried the filled shells in sand along their routes. When the droughts came, as they always did, the San had a water supply.Australia, a Dry Continent S urviving in the Desert In the heart of Australia, a father and son walk across the reddish-orange earth dotted with scrub bushes. The man and boy are Aborigines, a people who have lived on this continent for at least 40,000 years. Thousands of years of close and careful observation of their environment have equipped Aborigines for survival on this mostly flat, mostly desert continent, a ocabulary aborigine a native person who originally settled and lived in an area The father stops to examine the earth. To the unpracticed eye, this spot is no different from any other spot on the red earth, He motions to his son. ‘The boy begins stamping on the ground with his bare foot, raising little clouds of red dust. The father joins in, and soon the thumping sends lizards scurrying into the scrub bushes. op their foot stamping and listen for the sound they've been hoping to hear—the croaking of frogs, muffled beneath the earth. From their burrows under the lesert frogs thought they were hearing the sound of thunder, signaling rain to come. surface, In a real rainstorm the frogs would emerge from their burrows and drink water from rain pools, filling their bodies almost to bursting. Then they would retreat to their burrows and use the water stored in their bodies until the next storm. But the man and boy have fooled the frogs. ‘They use sticks to dig in the earth until they each pull out a frog, The desert sands of central Australia support an unusually large number of lizards. Two hundred different species can be found in this very arid region.its body bloated with water. Tilting their heads back, they squeeze the frogs until a stream of liquid squirts out, flowing down the Aborigines parched throats. The Outback ‘Two-thirds of Australia is arid or semi-arid, with few rivers and litele rain, The interior of the continent, mostly desert, is called the Outback. ‘The Outback is so dry in some regions that it seems impossible that any creature could survive there. Most of the desert land is covered with sand hills and spotted with short grasses. Sands often swirl into huge dunes. There is not much water in the Outback, but, after a rain, rocky pools sometimes fill up. These pools are important sources of water. Water also collects in pools in old riverbeds, places the Australians call billabongs (dry streambeds that fill with water only in the rainy season). Sudden, heavy rains can briefly fill old riverbeds and lakes, but the water quickly washes down the riverbed, and the lakes dry out, leaving salt fats. This dry land supports many animals not found anywhere else, such as the emu, a large flightless bird weighing as much as 100 pounds. of the unique creatures are marsupials, such as the kangaroo. Marsupials are well-adapred to the desert conditions, primarily because they require less food than most other mammals. Kangaroos can survive on less food because it takes less energy to hop on their two hind legs than it takes to run on four legs. A Singing Map Today only a few Aborigines who live in the Austr deserts have preserved the traditional way of life. However, before the Europeans came to Australia and disrupted their culture, the Aborigines proved that human beings can survive in even the most unforgiving climate. According to Aborigine myth, the world w created during the “dreamtime,” a time before time. The things of Earth were created by ances, beings, who walked the earth singing out the name of each thing as they created it. They sang into existence the water holes, the gum trees, the riverbeds, the sand dunes. Everywhere they walked, they sang, leaving a trail of song behind them, Once the world was created and named, the beings joined with nature, becoming one with it, The beings themselves disappeared, but they left their songs. This is the Aborigine myth of how their “songlines” came into being. ‘These songlines, or songs, have been passed by word of mouth from generation to generation for thousands of years and were key to the Aborigines’ knowledge of how to survive in their desert world. The so are literally maps of the land in that they name and locate familiar places. a . a Aborigines were originally and gatherers. Small bands of pe a territory that could be as square miles. By singing the find the food and water neces Their songlines were like maps rocky pools of water a hundred miles places where they could find wild pl season or to rich hunting grounds, Asingle Aborigine man on a “walkabout,” or wandering journey, might reach the edge of the terri- tory described in his songlines. He would then ask the group of Aborigines in the adjoining territory to teach hi He could then safely travel long distances in the harsh desert, finding food and water by using the musical map of the songlines. its young in a pouch that is part of its abd im their songlines. PSB ESV1 China. Eigk bone-dry region place. The Gobi in central Asia is one of the world’s highest, driest deserts. A protoceratops, a plant-eating dinosaur, was peacefully grazing near the banks of a salt marsh. In the grasses i at covered the area, a predator lurked—a velociraptor, one of the most efficient at-eating dinosaurs. Sensing that the moment was right, the velociraptor struck, using its Powerful hind legs vo leap on the back of the Protoceratops. The plant-eating dinosaur fought back, using its strong hind legs, its long heavy tail, and its powerful beak-shaped jaws. But neither animal could overcome the other. Soon both lay on the ground, gasping their last breaths. They would die there together, predator and prey, lying next to each other for 80 million years until scientists discovered their bones in what has become the arid desert of the Gobi. The Gobi is almost entirely surrounded by mountains, which are barriers to rain clouds,Most of the land is covered in rock and gravel, with few sand dunes. The dryness and salty soil limie the growth of vegetation to scrub brush and grasses. But where there is the occasional river, or groundwater that creates an oasis, poplar trees, flowering shrubs, and reeds thrive. The Gobi is one of the driest deserts on Earth, with rainfall averaging less than eight inches per year and in some places less than four inches. Most of the rivers coming into the Gobi out of the mountains that ring the desert dry up before reaching the interior. ‘Temperatures are extreme in the Gobi. In the winter, it can get as cold as -40°F. In the summer, temperatures can rise to more than 100°F, Extreme dryness and extreme temperatures make the Gobi one of the most forbidding of Earth's deserts. The Arabian Peninsula The Arabian Peninsula lies between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Its northernmost end connects the continents of Africa and Asia. Parts of the peninsula are covered with rock and gravel, but most of itis a vast expanse of sand, the largest sand desert in the world, Sand dunes can reach as high as 800 feet and stretch for 30 miles. The land is mostly empty. One large part of the peninsula is called Rub’ al Khali, meaning “Empty Quarter” in Arabic, The few nomadic camel-herding Bedouin tribes that roam this land call the region ar-Ramlah, or “the Sand,” In the summer the average daytime temperature in the sand deserts can reach 110°R, Not a single significant and permanent river runs through this peninsula. Most of the land is bone-dry. Where there is enough moisture for people to live, the most important plant is the date palm tree. Dates are an important food The discovery of oil in the Arabian Peninsula has made some Arabs very wealthy. Here, a modern arab uses his cell phone while standing tn raat for humans. In addition, fiber from the trees is used for ropes and mats, and the wood is used for building. Most of the land on the peninsula belongs Saudi Arabia. When the Saudi Arabian king, Ib; Saud, inherited his kingdom in 1932, he did no: know thar beneath the sand was enough oil to make him and his family fabulously rich In 1933, officials from the American-owned Standard Oil Company offered the king 35,000 gold coins—plus a percentage of profits from anything found—for the right to drill for oil in his kingdom. After several years of preparation and drilling, more oil was discovered than anyone had imagined. Today, more than one-third of Earth’s known gas and oil lies beneath the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula.| he Mojave The hottest, driest, lowest desert in the United Si tates is the Mojave [mo HAH vee] Desert located mainly in southeastern California and southern Nevada. It is one of three hot deserts running along the western side of North America. Bounded by mountains on the east and west, the Mojave has two rivers winding their way usual summer highs of 125°F, On July 10, 1913, the temperature reached an all-time record high through the region and drying out into salt flats. for the United States—134°F. Water flowing down from the Death mountains can create tempo- rary lakes, but these soon evaporate in the dry heat Valley in California Death Valley was once a is both the lowest and _ busy atea. In the 1800s, bo- hottest place in the 4 mincral sale with many industrial uses, was mined in The:desert baditvis cov United States. Death Valley. Covered wagons ered mainly with low shrubs. But as the basin cattied workers and resources in and out of the slopes upward to the mountains, there appears desert. Today, Death Valley is a National Park. the plant most associated with the Mojave—the Joshua tree, The Joshua tree is actually a type of member of the lily family. Ie grows 20 yucca, to 30 feet high and serves as home or lookout post for many species of birds, such as the ladder- backed woodpecker, the screech owl, and the sparrow hawk. ‘The most famous region of the Mojave is Death Valley, a low spot 130 miles long and ranging from 6 to 14 miles wide. Death Valley was formed when a block of earth dropped down between two fault lines. Death Valley has the lowest elevation in the Western Hemisphere— 282 feet below sea level. Ic is also the driest place in the United Seates, receiving less than The Devil's Highway In the last century, if you were a settler or a gold hunter traveling the southern route to California, you would cross the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, The trail across the desert is a 200-mile stretch that earned the name Devil’s Highway. Why such a grim name? This bleak land has only one dependable water source. Coyotes and wild burros and Gila monsters roam the dusty land, and the area is crusted with black lava rock. Travelers in the 1800s could not avoid seeing makeshift crosses dotting the trail, grave markers of the many travelers who perished along the way. fault line a crack In 1905, W J McGee, an editor for the in Earth’s outer crust along which movement takes place National Geographic Society, set up a research station at the one place with water to study the plants and animals of the region. Later he wrote of his encounter with two travelers who had miraculously survived the deadly desert. McGee ‘wo inches of rain per year. Death Valley also met gold prospectors Pablo Valencia and his boasts a record temperature, even higher than its partner as they passed along the trail nd invitedthem to spend the night at his camp. McGee described Valencia as having a “remarkably fine and vigorous physique.” Eight days later, McGee was awakened in the early morning by a piercing, agonized scream. In a nearby canyon, McGee and his assistant discovered Pablo Valencia. McGee was shocked. In just eight days, Valencia’ body had shrunk until his “ribs ridged out like those of a starving horse. . . . His joints and bones stood out and ing shrunken rawhide.” They poured water over the skin clung to them in a way sugges Valencia’s body and down his throat, but Valencia could not talk or even swallow. Valencia had been separated from his partner, who was with the horses and supplies. Valencia was left in the desert with only one canteen of water. He had wandered in circles through the desert, lost and disoriented from thirst. By the seventh day, he had lost 40 pounds; he could not focus his eyes, and his tongue was black and shrunken like leather, He lay down in a gully, convinced that he was going to die there. But he let out one last howl, the cry that brought McGee to his rescue i ible ordeal, but itis Valencia survived his tertib a chilling story of what the desert can do to a ‘son, Even today, travelers are warned to take person. extra water in their cars and check their gas tan} before crossing the desert. The Chihuahuan Desert To the south and east of the Sonoran Desert lies the Chihuahuan [chuh WAH wahn] Desert, Most of this desert sits on a plateau in Mexico between two ranges of mountains. It also stretche into Texas and New Mexico. The desert has few sand dunes. The most notable are the white sand dunes at White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. The area is so desolate that the United States military uses part of White Sands as a testing range for bombs and missiles. ‘The desert plateau in Mexico receives varying amounts of rainfall, depending on variations in clevation. Rain comes mainly in the form of brie! violent thunderstorms, Average rainfall is only about eight inches a year, although the higher clevations may receive more. Temperatures vary according to elevation, but most of the desert has cool to cold winters and hot summers. The Yucca plant is one of the few plants able to survive in the Chihuahuan Desert.A Place to Hide In the late 1800s, two American outlaws named Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid needed a place to hide. Butch and Sundance hopped a boat to South America and found the perfect place to hide out: the vast plains and desert of southern Argentina called Patagonia. They set up a cattle ranch for a few years on the plains of Patagonia, which reminded them of Wyoming and Montana. But these two never could settle down. After a few years in Patagonia they wandered north and were killed in a shootout with soldiers in Bolivia. s a vast plateau, or tableland, y without trees, in the southern a. It is bounded on the west by the soaring Andes Mountains and on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, Its coastline has cliffs almost its entire length, In the south, the cliffs can be as high as 150 feet. On the north, Patagonia is bounded by the Rio Colorado. From there it stretches south 1,200 miles to the tip of South America, the island of Tierra del Fuego [tee air uh del fay goh]. Patagonia Much of Patagonia is semi-arid steppe. Cattle and sheep graze on the short grasses and shrubs of the steppes. Rainfall averages between four and cight inches a year, but the dry winds evaporate most of the moisture, so that the entire region is almost completely without trees. Rivers flow down from the Andes toward the ocean, cutting deep canyons on the tableland. However, as these rivers cross the dry region, they gradually become smaller and smaller, Only a few of them make it all the way to the Atlantic. ‘The surface of the land is made up of gravel, rock, and, in some places, basalt as a result of old volcanoes in the region. The basalt plains often have hollows that contain shallow lakes. Patagonia is in the Southern vocabulary Hemisphere, basalt a dark or so the winter black rock that looks months are like glass; basalt forms June through September. The coldest month is July, when temperatures can drop well below freezing, Summer temperatures can climb to 100°F or more. The wind blows constantly in Patagonia, down from the Andes Mountains eastward toward the Atlantic Ocean. Big Feet, the Guanaco, and the Rhea In 1520, Ferdinand Magellan's expedition to sail around the world stopped on the shores of what is now Argentina. According to legend, the man who recorded the events of the expedition saw huge footprints in the snow. He called the people who made those prints Patagones [pat ah GOHN es], Spanish for “big feet.” The land thus earned the name Patagonia. The people who made the footprints in the snow were Tehuelche [teh hue EL chay] Indians. Storiesme to Patagonia Europeans Co! . Jers arrived in what is no, As European sett ‘Argentina, they pushed int Patagonia to establish sheep an¢ Many of the immigrants were from: : Great Britair fleeing from their hard life spread throughout Europe of a gigantic race of incredibly strong people who lived in what is Be iniecior of nia. The truth is that the Tehuelches now Pa is » and cattle ranches n Wales in They were wore very large boots stuffed with straw to keep their feet warm. This accounted for their large footprints. They were generally tall and strong but hardly the giants that the Europeans imagined coal miners. As the Welsh miners made their way inland into the vast wilderness of them to be When the Spanish came to Patagonia in the 1600s, they brought horses with Patagonia, the names they gave to the places through which they passed tell of their hardships—the Island of Desolation, Port Famine Anxious Point. The Welsh were delighted by the noisy. flightless water birds that came ashore on the Patagonian desert by the hundreds of thousands each spring. They called them “pen-gywns.” Penguins continue to amaze and them. As happened in North America, horses escaped and were captured, tamed, and bred by the native people. Not much is known about the Tehuelches before the horse was introduced, But with the horse, the Tehuelches took to the steppes of Patagonia, living much like the North American Indians of the Great Plains. The rheaita neiesota delight people in their But the Tehuelches did not Patagonia region of Argentina. habitat and in zoos around hunt buffalo. They hunted the world. guanaco and rhea. Patagonia Today ‘The guanaco [gwah NAH koh], which is Patagonia today is still very sparsely populat- related to the camel, looks like a small camel ed. Butt is a productive and valuable pare of without a hump. It is about four feet tall at the Argentina. Sheep ranches cover huge areas of shoulder, with long legs and reddish brown hair. land. Farms The Tehuelches hunted guanaco on horseback, and orchards are using bows and arrows and a weapon called a irrigated by the habitat the hts few permanent environment in which bola. A bola is made from a rope with we tied at each end. The Tehuelches threw th a plant or an animal normally lives rivers. Patagonia bolas at the legs of animals, causing them to also provides fall when their legs became entangled. The Argentina with Tehuelches also hunted rhea, a flightless bird energy from oil wells. There are also iron and similar to the ostrich, The thea is about five copper mines in Patagonia, The rest of the huge tall and weighs about 50 pounds. area that is Patagonia remains much as Magellan first saw it—a vast, desolate wilderness, and like all Earth's deserts, full of mystery.