Stone Forests of Madagascar

Stunning Photos of the Stone forests of Madagascar...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2126941/Life-edge-Inside-worlds-largest-STONE-forest-tropical-rain-eroded-rocks-300ft-razor-sharp-spikes.html


Article from National Geographic....

On an island famous for its biodiversity (90 percent of the species here are endemic, found nowhere else on Earth), the 600-square-mile protected area is an island unto itself, a kind of biofortress, rugged, largely unexplored, and made nearly impenetrable by the massive limestone formation—the tsingy—running through it.
The great block of Jurassic stone has dissolved into a labyrinth of knife-edged towers, slot canyons, and wet caves that ward off humans while harboring other animals and plants. New species are frequently described from the isolated habitats within—a previously unknown coffee plant in 1996, a minuscule lemur in 2000, a bat in 2005, a frog two years later. Even larger animals have been found relatively recently, including a long-legged lemur discovered in 1990 but named, somewhat whimsically, only in 2005 after British comedian and conservation advocate John Cleese.
Read more...
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/11/stone-forest/shea-text/1