![]() The lake is within the Lake Natron Basin, a Ramsar Site wetland of international significance. It is in the Gregory Rift, which is the eastern branch of the East African Rift. This Tanzanian lake attracts many animals. ![]() Lake Natron is definitely one of the most amazing and beautiful lakes in t he world and at the same time it is ill-famed for being one of the most deadly water reservoirs on our planet. Other volcanoes usually spew silicates, but the Ol Doinyo Lengai is the only one on the planet that spills "natrocarbonatites" as cool, runny, dark washes. Lake Natron is a salt or alkaline lake located in north Ngorongoro District of Arusha Region in Tanzania. Wonderful Yet Deadly Lake Turns Its Victims into Stone Statues. It's a favorite among petrologists because it's the only one of its kind, Hannes Mattsson, a researcher at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich, told NBC News. However, you should not imagine the classic blue lake, but rather a basin of reddish water with deep white streaks typical color of those lakes rich in sodium and often subject to evaporation cycles. The culprit is Ol Doinyo Lengai, a million-year old volcano just south of Lake Natron. The lake that turns animals into stone is called Lake Natron and is located in northern Tanzania, in the African Rift Valley at about 600m altitude. Perhaps the staff of New Scientist will see it when our time comes but, until then, Lake Natron in northern Tanzania does a pretty good job of illustrating. Nick Brandt / Courtesy of Hasted Kraeutler Gallery A calcified dove, from Nick Brandt's book Across The Ravaged Land, published by Abrams, New York. How did the lake get this hostile? The "salt" in it isn't the regular table variety harvested from seawater, but magmatic limestone that's been forged deep in the Earth, poured out in runny lava flows and blasted into the air to become ash clouds 10 miles high. Top Image: The highly alkaline nature of Lake Natron kills most animals, turning them into petrified statues after their deaths. Water levels fluctuate easily because it's so hot - when the levels drop, the corpses are left behind on the shores, coated in salt, exactly how Brandt found them. Small birds or bats that try and fail to cross the 12- by 30-mile lake fall in, as do insects like beetles and locusts. Flamingos are some of the lucky birds that can make the trip across the lake which is 30-miles wide at its longest point. "If a body falls anywhere else it decomposes very quickly, but on the edge of the lake, it just gets encrusted in salt and stays forever," David Harper, an ecologist at the University of Leicester who has visited Lake Natron four times, told NBC News. It it an extraordinarily harsh environment, where the extremely salty water may reach temperatures of 60 C (140 F) and.
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