Study reveals more about Taklimakan Desert

A study by Chinese scientists recently discovered that the existing landscape of the Taklimakan Desert in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region began taking shape approximately 300,000 years ago, and speculated that the initial formation of the desert dates back about 1.8 million years ago.

This timeline places the Taklimakan Desert as much older than the Badain Jaran and Tengger deserts in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, which respectively emerged around 1.1 million and 900,000 years ago.

The Taklimakan Desert is the largest desert in China and the second-largest mobile desert in the world. Prior to this discovery, the timing of the formation of major deserts in China and Central Asia remained unclear in academic circles, according to Wang Xin, a professor from the College of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Lanzhou University.