The mountains of “Aktau”
About mountains
The Aktau Mountains are the most picturesque and unique in their landscapes place in the national park. This is the bottom of the ancient sea that once filled the Iliysk basin. As the sea disappeared, nature created here the most beautiful gorges and canyons of steep walls composed of multicolored layers of rocks: from green and red in the lower part to mottled and white in the upper part. The height of the sediments reaches 1000 m, the main canyons are concentrated within three main lodes, stretching from top to bottom for more than 5 km. The total area of outcrop is about 50 sq/km.
As a result of excavations, numerous remains of ancient animals that lived in different geological epochs (late Eocene, upper Oligocene, early Miocene, Anthropogenic) were discovered, such as brontotheria, crocodiles, mollusks, turtles, giant rhinoceros, mastodons, and deer. A fully preserved skeleton of a brontotherium and three skulls were discovered during joint Kazakh-American expeditionary work in 1995-97 and are the first most complete materials found in Kazakhstan. Judging by the preserved remains of trunks, leaf prints, the main vegetation here was xerophilous forests consisting of poplars – ancestors of modern turang, oaks, tugai.
