The Sahara is one of the harshest environments on Earth, covering 3.6 million square miles (9.4 million square kilometers), nearly a third of the African continent, about the size of the United States (including Alaska and Hawaii). The name of the desert comes from the Arabic word ?a?r??, which means “desert.”
The Sahara desert has a variety of land features, but is most famous for the sand dune fields that are often depicted in movies. The dunes can reach almost 600 feet (183 meters) high but they cover only about 15 percent of the entire desert. Other topographical features include mountains, plateaus, sand- and gravel-covered plains, salt flats, basins and depressions. Mount Koussi, an extinct volcano in Chad, is the highest point in the Sahara at 11,204 feet (3,415 m), and the Qattara Depression in Egypt is the Sahara’s deepest point, at 436 feet (133 m) below sea level.
Camels are one of the most iconic animals of the Sahara. The large mammals are native to North America and eventually made their way across the Bering Isthmus between 3 and 5 million years ago, according to a study in the Research Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Management in 2015. Camels were domesticated about 3,000 years ago on the Southeast Arabian Peninsula, to be used for transportation in the desert, according to the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna.
Plant species in the Sahara have adapted to the arid conditions, with roots that reach deep underground to find buried water sources and leaves that are shaped into spines that minimize moisture loss. The most arid parts of the desert are completely void of plant life, but oasis areas, such as the Nile Valley, support a large variety of plants, including olive trees, date palms and various shrubs and grasses.
Picture Credit : Google