The Badlands is a moon-like landscape rising abruptly from South Dakota's western, prairie hills. These chiseled spires, steep canyons, low-slung buttes and jagged ridges were created from millions of years of ravages by wind and water. During their first encounter, the Lakota Indians called them Mako Sica or bad land. Badlands National Park covers 244,000 acres and contains one of the world's richest deposits of fossils from the Oligocene epoch. The Badlands were once a lush, marshy plain that was home to three-toed horses, giant pigs and saber-tooth cats. Approximately 120,000 acres of the Badlands lie on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
