Fossil River : Amazing Places on Earth: Uluru the Monolith

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In "Avatar," a noble, indigenous people fight to protect their sacred landmarks against an invading culture. If you're pining for that sort of drama, then look no further than Australia's Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. Here you'll find mighty Uluru, one of the largest geologic monoliths in the world.

Dubbed "Ayers Rock" by Europeans, the 5.8-mile (9.4-kilometer) wide slab of arkose (a type of sandstone) resonates with sacred significance for the Anangu people. Aboriginal paintings pepper its base, as well as caves and waterholes held sacrosanct in the spiritual tradition of Tjukuritja. While the Anangu have visited the site for roughly 22,000 years, they only regained legal ownership of the land in 1985 after a century of European rule.

Uluru is the visible tip of a much larger rock slab that extends deep into the Earth. In ages past, this tip was underground as well, but hundreds of millions of years of erosion have reduced the surrounding landscape. Uluru gets its red complexion from clay and rusted iron minerals within the sandstone. At dusk and dawn, the monolith takes on even darker, crimson hues.

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