Badlands National Park is a place of stark beauty. Grasslands meet eroded canyons at the aptly named wall. Pinnacles, spires and buttes are tinted pink, purple and red by the rising and setting sun. Storms rage on the Badlands many a summer afternoon. It's dry as a bone at all other times. So why take the kids? Beneath the façade lies a whole 'nother world. The badlands boast a human history 11,000 years long. Mammoth hunters, Native Americans, cattle ranchers and homesteaders have all dwelled in this dry, desolate place. Badlands National Park is home to a variety of wildlife. Bighorn sheep, swift fox, prairie dogs, black-footed ferret and bison inhabit this 244,000-acre (98,743 hectare) expanse. What's more, the geological formations at Badlands National Park harbor life systems millions of years old. The gray-green Chadron Formation, made of siltstone and soft clay, contains fossils of flat, broad-teethed animals. Fossils of early horses, pigs and camels are found in the gravel and sandstone rock that form the Brule Formation. The gray and black shale, known as the Pierre Formation, contains remnants of ancient marine life. A lush forest, savannah and shallow sea once spread out across Badlands National Park.