Ischigualasto

Have you ever imagined walking on the moon. I look a little like that. My ground is pale and dry, and strange shapes of rock stand silently all around me, carved into mushrooms and bowling balls. For millions of years, the wind and rain have been my artists, shaping my colorful land. It is so quiet here you can almost hear the earth breathing. People who visit me say I look like another world. They call me the Valley of the Moon. My real name is Ischigualasto, and I rest in a faraway country called Argentina.

But I was not always a quiet, dry desert. If you could travel back in time with me, more than 200 million years ago, you would see a very different place. During a time called the Triassic Period, I was a lush, green land full of life. Rivers flowed through me, and giant ferns grew tall, making shade for the amazing creatures that called me home. It was here, around 231 million years ago, that some of the very first dinosaurs walked upon the Earth. There was the small Eoraptor, quick on its feet, and the bigger Herrerasaurus, a mighty hunter. When they died, their bodies were sometimes covered by soft mud from the rivers. Over millions of years, the mud hardened into rock, and their bones turned into fossils, like treasures hidden deep inside me, waiting to tell their story.

As millions of years passed, my rivers dried up, my giant ferns disappeared, and I became the dry valley you see today. My dinosaur bones stayed a secret, sleeping under layers of rock. Then, one day, people began to uncover my secrets. In the 1950s, a local man named Victorino de la Vega was walking across my land when he found some strange-looking 'stones' that were shaped like bones. He knew they were special. His discovery led scientists to visit me, and in 1958, a man named Alfred Romer came. He was so excited. He and his team realized my stones were the fossilized bones of some of the oldest dinosaurs in the entire world.

Because my fossils are such an important window into the past, people knew I needed to be protected. In 1971, I officially became a park, a safe place for my dinosaur treasures. My most special day came on November 30th, 2000, when I was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. That means I am a treasure for everyone on Earth. I am like a giant storybook made of rock, and every fossil is a word from a time long ago. I love sharing the story of the dawn of the dinosaurs, and I hope I will always inspire people to wonder about our planet's incredible, long history.