>> Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley)

The Ischigualasto Natural Provincial Park, is 330km North East from the capital of the province, in the Department of Valle Fértil. To the North it is bounded, by the Talampaya Provincial Park, in the province of La Rioja. It was created to preserve one of the most important paleontological deposits of vertebrates representatives of the Triassic period, in the American Continent, and in the world. The are has a semi dessert and desolate aspect, and that is why it is called Moon Valley or Painted Valley. In the past the area was covered by a lush forest of Acacias, Ginkos, and Palm Trees, and there also were some lakes and swamps. The apparition of the Andes, only 60 million years ago, changed completely the life conditions that existed in the previous 180 million years.

Today, that lush environment has been transformed into an arid region in which erosion carved peculiar shapes. Brick-red sands, spattered with isolated green and ocher blocks, with up to 200 meter-high rough slopes and reefs where you can easily distinguish the different strata, giant columns and thin obelisks, combined with gullies where streams and rivers run during the summer, form the landscape of the Park. The vegetation is formed by thickets of less than 3 meter-high bushes, the arum being the most representative species. The Guanaco and the mara are the biggest herbivores; among the carnivores the ferret, and the small gray fox, as well as several cats like the puma, are included. The most common bird is the ñandu, followed by the common heron, and birds of prey like the eagle and the carrion hawk.

The fields of Ischigualasto with its green, gray, black and red sediments, hide such an impressive quantity and variety of fossils, that constitutes one of the most important paleontological deposits in the world. The Ischigualasto Provincial Park is considered one of the richest paleontological deposits of Triassic terapside reptiles, those from which the mammals would later evolve. Almost all the area of the Ischigualasto is formed by lands of the Triassic period, characteristic for the absolute domain of the dinosaurs, which has contributed with a wide range of fossils and their study has enabled important advance in the knowledge of the history of life. Several fossils of herbivore, as well as carnivore reptiles have been found in the area. The most recent discovery, the one of the Coraptor, revolutionized science, and is the oldest dinosaur known (228 million years old).

Fossils of reptiles very similar to the current crocodiles and other species of great interest for the science, have also been found. Besides these fossils of reptiles, rests of great petrified trees have been found, and they can bee seen at a place called the "Petrified Wood", within the tourist circuit. The cultural testimonies are present in the inscriptions and drawings in the rocks, tops of arrows and other stone elements that have found in different places. Although this evidence has not been thoroughly studied, it is supposed that they are about 1,200 or 1,400 years old.