[00:01] This is one of the most unique deserts in the world. Not only can its pure white sands be seen from outer space, but for years it's left many scientists with more questions than answers.
[00:13] Like, why are there these giant, mysterious pedestals scattered throughout that seem to defy the laws of physics? How are there so many diverse animals seen nowhere else on Earth? And where did these footprints come from?
[00:27] Discovered just last year, they're dated 10,000 years before Homo sapiens even arrived in North America.
[00:40] We are here in New Mexico at White Sands National Park for Earth Day as part of YouTube's Non-Sungible Planet campaign to appreciate the beauty of this thing we call home. This is so interesting. Everything is so white here. It's crazy.
[00:53] and just over there, there was a breakthrough last year that was made that has changed human history forever. But first, why is there this moonlight, gorgeous, white desert in the middle of America? I know, we're in White Sands here. Boom!
[01:05] White Sands. 300 million years ago, this was the Permian Sea, full of water and sharks and sapsapaws and nautilai. Over millions of years, that water evaporated and left behind deposits of gypsum.
[01:19] You can actually see the gypsum in the mountains over there yonder. It's the white little streaks. They're actually not little, they're rather huge, just far away. Around 10,000 years ago, and it still happens today, the rains began washing the gypsum and other minerals off of the mountain
[01:34] to the lowest part of the basin we're in right now called Lake Lucero. But Lake Lucero doesn't actually drain into any ocean, so the hot sand and the wind evaporates the water out, and according to the laws of nature, the dehydrated gypsum left behind starts to form selenite crystals which jut out all over the lake.
[01:51] This is a super windy desert area which breaks up the soft crystals into stars which continues to get whipped around by the wind until they become coarse grains of gypsum sand. So all these little pieces of white gypsum have been scratched and whipped together,
[02:05] that's why they appear white, and over the last 10,000 years, the whipping of all of those gypsum selenite crystals into these little pieces of sand have created these unbelievable dunes, and as I say this out loud, I'm just like, how is this real?
[02:18] Do you think it'd be tough? I don't know. I do find that sand is hell to walk on, and you know, we're on the white sand in the National Park, so I'm not thinking it's gonna be easy. But what keeps the white sand from blowing away
[02:30] across America never to be seen again Well there groundwater 12 to 36 inches below the surface of the dunes and this water helps hold the large dunes in place So the water and gypsum mix to make this plaster substance
[02:44] The water is essentially just holding onto the sand, keeping it in place, and making this the largest white gypsum desert in the world. Which, yes, there can be some space. Oh, there we go! There we go! And on the surface, these dunes are very soft, but you just have to
[03:01] especially about an inch or so. Oh, wow. It's very hard. It's cold. Oh, my gosh. It's so cold. The water's wet. You can see still the rain. The dune itself inside is hard because of this water,
[03:15] and that's what holds the dune in place. If it was just a soft sand, it would blow away. I love that. I love it. I dig it. The dunes can actually move up to 38 feet per year, but are ultimately contained within the boundaries of the aquifer.
[03:29] These tracks behind me are actually from the dunes moving on. So as the wind blows, you can see this dune's moved over there, and it's left in its wake, this harder sort of clay-like substance. And scientists don't know exactly the mechanism by which it happened,
[03:43] but even though they're kind of shaped this way, you'd think it's been being pushed. They believe it's from the tail end of the dune moving that way. So these tracks all here are from that dune moving that way. Sometimes when you're in sand dunes, you've got to get from the intra-dunal space
[03:56] up to where you need to keep hiking. So, let's meet the dog with the thick legs and the butt up! Oh my god! It's a lot fair, but it's kind of gorgeous for the feetsies.
[04:11] But it is really unique, like if this was any other desert it would be so hot. Yeah, literally like, it's so nice and cold. We've seen a variety of the smaller pedestals scattered throughout the park, but we actually needed to go off the marked trail to find the huge ones we had read about.
[04:25] When we saw a truly massive one in the distance, we had our friends stand on top of the dune so we could always know how to get back, as the dry, hot desert can dehydrate you quickly. And recently, somebody died after getting lost on this hike,
[04:39] so we stayed close and with an eyesight and finally reached the one we were looking for. One of the most striking parts about this desert are these giant, pedestal structures. This one's almost three stories tall, and it's interesting because it's this hard structure in an otherwise soft-spanned desert.
[04:54] and for a long time scientists didn't really understand what was going on. But it turns out it has to do with the way the sand moves. As the dunes slowly slide over the landscape, they often cover the shrubs and plants, and for many that simply spells doom or death.
[05:07] But for others they adapt by frantically growing upward to get back to the surface where the sun is which is great for a while The problem for plants like the soap tree yucca which you can see all around the desert is that when the dune continues to move on
[05:21] the yucca is no longer able to support such a tall stalk and it falls over and dies. The skunkbush sumac, on the other hand, grows tall to reach the surface, but has roots that pull water into the gypsum. This gypsum then turns into a hard plaster-like
[05:36] substance, and when the dune moves on, the hardened pedestal stays put, supporting the plant, which continues to live on top of it. Like, it's really hard, because the roots go right up the water, even though it's still standing, you can break it apart if you need to, and it becomes softer again.
[05:51] Modern art from nature, the moment. While at the pedestals, I freaked out, because we were lucky enough to find a bleached, earless lizard. These exist nowhere else on Earth. So that's the bleached, earless lizard we were told we wouldn't be able to see one,
[06:04] because they're so well-camouflaged. and it's because roadrunners, the birds, eat these earless lizards. Outside of this park, they're brown or black, but in it, over 10,000 years, due to mutations that would be more advantageous when they were lighter,
[06:17] sort of proliferating over that period of time, they have now bleached this white color. It's an amazing example of rapid evolution that's super rare to see in nature. 10,000 years for a species of lizard to change color, like that,
[06:29] to turn white, is really, really quickly on evolutionary terms. Essentially, the roadrunners can't see the white ones as well, So any mutation that would make an earless lizard more white would be advantageous. I'm like starstruck by a lizard right now.
[06:42] It's so hard and cold. And it's warm too. It's like a sea hell. No. But these lizards aren't the only uniquely adapted animals to the white sands. There are sand treader camel crickets, lightened Apache pocket mice, 40 different species of white moths,
[06:56] and even sand wolf spiders much lighter in color than anywhere else on Earth. Time to see how much sand's in my chair. Here at White Sands, if you happen to be quite like me, apparently you have to put sunscreen under your nose, under your chin, under your arms, because the sun actually gets reflected so well off of this sand.
[07:16] A lot of people don't do that and end up getting burnt in all these weird ways, so hopefully at the end of this I don't look like a weird Canadian flag. We're at the edge of the dunes right now, and just behind me are the Alkali Flats, where last year, footprints frozen in time from the Ice Age proved that humans were living here in America 10,000 years earlier than we had initially thought.
[07:37] Before it was thought that humans came to America between 13 to 16 years ago but by studying these footprints at White Sands the course of human history has now changed and we understand that humans were here 22 to 23 thousand years ago Because these alpha blocks are so flat and so vast they go on for so long
[07:58] We can study these numerous footprints of giant blocks for humans and understand their behaviors and how they hunted the giant blocks, how teenagers were actually looking after kids, how the parents' lives were different than the kids' lives, so that we can actually
[08:12] not 100% in the year from these footprints. So how do scientists know this? Well, we left footprints behind us everywhere we went while hiking in the desert in 2022, and it turns out that humans also left distinct footprints here around 22,000 years ago.
[08:29] It happened during an abrupt warming event that lowered lake levels at the time in a way that when humans walked over the wet and dry ground, they left footprints that became preserved in multiple sediment layers that were dug up by scientists in the last few years.
[08:44] Scientists carefully inspected the prints and then carbon-dated seeds they found from water-dwelling plants that were also found around the footprints to prove the date that these footprints were from.
[08:56] And the discovery was mind-blowing as it proved that humans were walking around this part of America 10,000 years earlier than we had all thought. In these layers, scientists also found footprints of the Colombian land mammoths,
[09:08] ground sloths and dire wolves all roaming this land along with humans. The footprints even show human behavior. Some footprints show humans running even near and towards a ground sloth.
[09:20] Based on studying the ground sloth's tail prints, it seems the humans were chasing and potentially hunting the ground sloth. As well, based on size, it seems the footprints are mostly of teenagers and toddlers. Sometimes the toddler footprints would abruptly disappear and the teenage ones
[09:36] to get a little bit deeper, showing that the teenager had lifted up the toddler and carried them. I can't believe Earth has created this. I'm so confused where we are. Like, I don't even know what we're standing on. It feels like we're on a different planet. It truly feels like we are somewhere not on Earth.
[09:50] But so cool. Already so beautiful. We can go home. It's amazing. Thank you so much to YouTube for making all this happen. This Earth Day, YouTube will be supporting the Jackson Park Foundation so that everyone can enjoy the iconic, gorgeous landscapes of America.
[10:03] Did you know that every American lives within 100 miles of a national park? And with over 400 of them, you might be a lot closer to the greater outdoors than you realize. More details about that in the links in the description. Thank you for watching, make sure you're subscribed, we'll see you next week, and happy Earth Day!