Anti-Atlas Mountains

Position of center of photo (Lat/Long): [29.01652/-9.80854]

At first glance, the region, which is not far north of the Sahara Desert, seems completely barren, but careful inspection reveals several clusters of small brownish-green circles - evidence of agricultural fields being watered with center-pivot irrigation. The largest of these areas is along the river in the center-left part of the image. Though the area hardly seems like a hospitable place for a large city, in fact, the city of Guelmine, with a population of more than 95,000 people, sits just at the southwestern end of the oval-shaped mesa-like, rock formation.

Though they are separated by an ocean, Africa’s Anti-Atlas Mountains and North America’s Appalachian Mountains are linked in time. Both appear to have gotten their start hundreds of millions of years ago, before the end of the geologic era known as the Paleozoic (roughly 540-250 million years ago.) During the Paleozoic, plate tectonics compressed all the Earth’s continents into a single massive "supercontinent" called Pangaea, which stretched from pole to pole. During the formation of Pangaea, what is now North America crashed into what is now Africa several times. As the two continents were crushed together, the Appalachians and the Anti-Atlas were built. Through the following era, the Mesozoic (roughly 250-65 million years ago), the Atlantic Ocean opened between the two continents, separating the mountains.