The sand dunes in White Sands National Monument, NM shown in (A) may someday be preserved in sandstone, a sedimentary rock made of sand, like that shown in (B). If you made a sand dune into solid rock and then cut it in half, it would look like the canyon wall in (B). This rock is evidence that millions of years ago sand dunes were a part of this landscape.

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(A) Bruce Molnia, Terra Photographics and (B) Martin Miller University of Oregon. Both images courtesy of Earth Science World Imagebank.
Last modified January 14, 2004 by Lisa Gardiner.

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