THE GREAT RIFT VALLEY (Lebanon to Mozambique)
The Great Rift Valley is a 4,300-mile-long series of trenches that runs from Lebanon (in Asia) to Mozambique (in Africa). Tanzania's 30-mile-long Olduvai Gorge leading into the Rift is the site of some of the world's most important "early man" finds, associated with the team of Mary and Louis Leakey (prominent in the "National Geographic" when I was a kid).
(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)
HA LONG BAY (Vietnam)
Meaning "descending dragon," this bay features thousands of limestone karsts and isles in various shapes and sizes, the result of 20 million years of geological evolution. A famous Vietnamese poet called it "rock wonder in the sky." During the Vietnam War, the US Navy placed mines between some islands, some of which continue to pose a threat to shipping.
(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)
THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS (600 miles west of Ecuador in the Pacific)
Few would have heard of this archipelago 563 miles west of Ecuador were it not for Charles Darwin's 1835 visit aboard the HMS Beagle, when he was able to observe differences between isolated populations of animals (notably finches), contributing to the ideas expounded in his 1859 book, On the Origin of Species.
(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)
WHALE VALLEY (Wadi Al-Hitan, Egypt)
The dramatic landscape of Wadi Al-Hitan in Egypt's Western Desert is known as "Whale Valley" for its fossil evidence of the evolution of whales from land-based to ocean-going mammals. The many high-quality fossils allow paleontologists to observe transitional fossils of archaeocetes (the now-extinct "ancient whales") in the process of losing their hind legs.
(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons; CTTO)
