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Dulan Top 5 in Can't Miss Attractions

It is not uncommon to see shells on the beach, but it is a bit strange to see shells on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau that should have appeared on the beach, and they are still large. There is such a shell in the wilderness of Dulan County in the Qaidam Basin, Qinghai. The locals call it Shell Liang. The shell beam can only be regarded as a small hill, about 2 kilometers long and 70 meters wide, covered with hundreds of millions of large and small shells. The surface of the shell is covered with a thin layer of saline-alkali soil. After excavation, it has been dug down for 20 meters, which is a layer of shell accumulation. This is the largest paleontological strata discovered in our inland basin so far. These shells, the big one is the size of a coin, the small one is the size of a thumb, are mixed with the sand of the saline-alkali soil. Seeing a piece of white from a distance, it is still very spectacular when you come closer. According to geologists, the Qaidam Basin was still a vast ocean, the ancient Tethys Sea, hundreds of millions of years ago. Later, the seabed uplifted into a plateau during the orogeny, and some people speculated that these shells were left at that time. However, local geologists in Qinghai denied this claim. Their research showed that the shell beams were formed about 150,000 years ago. The shape of these shells is no different from the current shells, and they are not left over from ancient times. Although there is no exact study to confirm the source of these shells, the geological changes of the vicissitudes of life are indisputable facts. This place must have been a place with abundant water and grass in the past.

On the way to Golmud, the detour to the shell beam, did not expect this desert there should be such a place, then this was the ocean? Or the numerous geological lakes and the history of the survival of the witness? No exact statement? The most convincing argument is that Qaidam changed from sea to lake in the long geological period, and in the numerous alternate changes of dry wind and dry wind, the water level of the lake shrinks year by year, the Great Lakes gradually dry out to the bottom, and the dry winds threaten the aquarium. The shellfish have moved to the central water puddle in order to survive. The north of Nomuhong is the lowest puddle in the basin, where shellfish flock together and accumulate more and more on the ancient river. Somehow, the river water has changed course and drought has intensified. Under the stormy sand, all the shells are extinct, leaving only the shell wall, unable to prevent the water back, unable to prevent death, only from the seams of the shell of the spring, a curved stream of history.