| 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.
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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