Bungle Bungle Range is the landform that is the major component of the Purnululu National Park

Purnululu National Park

Purnululu National Park is a national park in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. It was declared a World Heritage Site in 2003.-Location:...

 in Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

 - it is often used as a direct synonym for the national park area.

The origin of the landscape

The distinctive beehive

Beehive (beekeeping)

A beehive is an enclosed structure in which some honey bee species of the subgenus Apis live and raise their young. Natural beehives are naturally occurring structures occupied by honeybee colonies, while domesticated honeybees live in man-made beehives, often in an apiary. These man-made...

-shaped towers are made up of sandstones and conglomerates

Conglomerate (geology)

A conglomerate is a rock consisting of individual clasts within a finer-grained matrix that have become cemented together. Conglomerates are sedimentary rocks consisting of rounded fragments and are thus differentiated from breccias, which consist of angular clasts...

 (rocks composed mainly of pebbles and boulders and cemented together by finer material). These sedimentary formations were deposited into the Ord Basin 375 to 350 million years ago, when active faults were altering the landscape. The combined effects of wind from the Tanami Desert

Tanami Desert

The Tanami Desert is a desert in northern Australia situated in the Northern Territory. It has a rocky terrain with small hills. The Tanami was the Northern Territory's final frontier and was not fully explored until well into the twentieth century...

 and rainfall over millions of years shaped the domes.

A 7 km diameter circular topographic feature is clearly visible on satellite images of the Bungle Bungle Range(Google Maps image). It is believed that this feature is the eroded remnant of a very ancient meteorite

Meteorite

A meteorite is a natural object originating in outer space that survives impact with the Earth's surface. Meteorites can be big or small. Most meteorites derive from small astronomical objects called meteoroids, but they are also sometimes produced by impacts of asteroids...

 impact crater

Impact crater

In the broadest sense, the term impact crater can be applied to any depression, natural or manmade, resulting from the high velocity impact of a projectile with a larger body...

 and is known as the Piccaninny impact structure

Piccaninny crater

Piccaninny "crater" refers to an impact structure, the eroded remnant of a former impact crater, situated in northern Western Australia. It was named after Piccaninny Creek and lies within the Purnululu National Park....

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External links

• http://www.naturebase.net/component/option,com_hotproperty/task,view/id,39/