Madagascar is truly a lost world. Cut off from the rest of the world, the island's lemur population thrived (they don't exist anywhere else on the planet, except in captivity), and a host of unique life forms evolved in relative isolation. Yet Madagascar's geology also stands apart from the rest of the world's -- especially the region known as Tsingy de Bemaraha.
Here, visitors encounter a forest of upturned limestone daggers. This painful-looking landscape, also known as karst topography, results from long-term dissolution of soluble limestone bedrock. Formerly a massive slab of rock, rainwater has whittled it down into multiple, individual towers of stone. The Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park protects a 600-square-mile (1,554-square-kilometers) region of stone and vegetation.
The inhospitable nature of the tisngy serves to protect a host of creatures, many of which avoided discovery by humans until the 21st century.
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