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The Learning Kingdom's Cool Fact of the Day for September 30, 1999
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What's the largest desert on Earth?
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Earth's largest unbroken desert is currently the Sahara Desert, which
covers most of northern Africa. Stretching from coast to coast, the
Sahara is about 4,800 kilometers across (3,000 miles), about the size
of the contiguous United States.
4000 years ago the Sahara was a land of grassy prairies with buffalo,
elephants, lions, and antelopes. Then the climate shifted quite
suddenly and the Sahara dried up, forcing massive changes in the
human societies of the region. No one knows why the climate shifted,
but there are several theories.
Before the Sahara dried up the largest desert would have been the
Australian central desert, which is about 3400 kilometers across
(2100 miles). There are deserts across a very broad stretch of
central Asia but they are broken by mountains with forests.
More about the Sahara Desert:
http://library.advanced.org/16645/the_land/sahara_desert.shtml
A Sahara photo gallery:
http://www.internezzo.com/sahara.html
Another Cool Fact about the Sahara Desert:
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/03/12.html
A Cool Fact about rock varnish, a desert phenomenon:
http://www.cool-fact.com/archive/1999/07/06.html
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