Any Animal That Touches This Lethal Lake Turns to Stone

[The One]

There's a deceptively still body of water in Tanzania with a deadly secret—it turns any animal it touches to stone. The rare phenomenon is caused by the chemical makeup of the lake, but the petrified creatures it leaves behind are straight out of a horror film.

Photographed by Nick Brandt in his new book, Across the Ravaged Land, petrified creatures pepper the area around the lake due to its constant pH of 9 to 10.5—an extremely basic alkalinity that preserves these creatures for eternity. According to Brandt:

I unexpectedly found the creatures - all manner of birds and bats - washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron in Northern Tanzania. No-one knows for certain exactly how they die, but it appears that the extreme reflective nature of the lake’s surface confuses them, and like birds crashing into plate glass windows, they crash into the lake. The water has an extremely high soda and salt content, so high that it would strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes within a few seconds. The soda and salt causes the creatures to calcify, perfectly preserved, as they dry.

I took these creatures as I found them on the shoreline, and then placed them in ‘living’ positions, bringing them back to ‘life’, as it were. Reanimated, alive again in death.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxLsDflOJhQ


http://www.newscientist.com/article/...l#.Uks9LHx3gyD

[Frances]

Wonder if there are petrified prehistoric animals at the bottom of that lake.
Frances.

Great photographs.

[Spiral]

Absolutely stunning, macabre, but stunning

[Mark]

Not sure what to say, I think Spiral sums it up? A sad strange beauty...

[Calz]

One would expect with such photographic "evidence" there would be some "science" behind this story???

(great images regardless ... just makes one go "hmmmm" )


*adding*


I guess reading the story perhaps there is ...

[skywizard]

Amazing story and photos at source:

"No one knows for certain exactly how these animals die, but it appears that the extreme reflective nature of the lake’s surface confuses them, causing them to crash into the lake," Brandt writes in his new photo book Across the Ravaged Land. "The water, blood-red from the bacteria that live in it, has an extremely high soda and salt content, so high that it would strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes within a few seconds. The soda and salt causes the creatures to calcify, perfectly preserved, as they dry."

"Discovering these animals washed up along the shoreline, I thought were extraordinary -- every last tiny detail perfectly preserved down to the tip of a bat's tongue, the minute hairs on his face. The entire fish eagle was the most surprising and revelatory find," Brandt said, who photographed these calcified animals.

The creatures, he said, were "rock hard" from the calcification. "There was never any possibility of bending a wing or turning a head to make a better pose -- they were like rock," he said, "so we took them and placed them on branches and rocks just as we found them for the photos”.




Read and see more photos: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...nce&ir=Science


peace...
skywizard

[Tribe]

How sad , that's really creepy too .