Cliff in the Bandelier National Monument
Avatar

Cliff in the Bandelier National Monument

by Fabien Darrouzet, Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB), Brussels, Belgium

Picture taken in September 2018 of a cliff in a US National Park called Bandelier National Monument located close to Los Alamos, New Mexico.
Much of the area was covered with volcanic ash (the Bandelier tuff) from an eruption of the Valles Caldera volcano 1.14 million years ago. The tuff overlays shales and sandstones deposited during the Permian Period and limestone of Pennsylvanian age.
The monument preserves the homes and territory of the Ancestral Puebloans, with existing structures dating between 1150 and 1600 AD.