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The Atlas Mountains
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The Atlas Mountain Range
Facts & Figures
The Atlas Mountain ranges are located in North-West Africa, spanning the countries of Morocco, Tunisia & Algeria. They cover 2,500km in the region known as the Maghreb, and separate the Sahara desert from the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of North Africa. The highest point of the ranges is named Toubakl, a peak in Morocco that is 4, 167 meters above sea level. Due to the nature of their formation the area has many natural resources, including silver, marble, iron, copper, lead and natural gas.
Facts & Figures
Sub-ranges
Anti-Atlas
Sub-ranges
The Atlas mountain range is divided into several sub-ranges. These are smaller areas that are part of the larger range. One of these is called the Anti-Atlas range, located in Morocco. It runs 500km from the Atlantic coast in the South-West to the North-West of the country. The average heights of the mountain peaks are around 2,600m above sea level, so the area is sparsely populated with no major town or cities in the area.
High Atlas
High Atlas
To the east of the Anti-Atlas range is the High Atlas range, so-called because the highest summits in Africa are located there. The peak of Toubkl is over 4,100m above sea level, while further east the second highest peak, Ighil m'Goun, is over 4,000m. Most of the range is in central Morocco, rising form the Anti-Atlas in the east and continuing towards the Moroccan-Algeria border in the west. The High Atlas is more populated than the Anti-Atlas as it contains valleys which house villages. It contains a man made lake & dam that provide water to people there, and also creates electrcicty for Morocco.
Middle Atlas
Middle Atlas
The Middle Atlas range is the third Atlas sub-range entirely in Morocco. It is located in the far north-east of Morocco close to the Algerian border, and is around 350km long. As it is further north it has a different climate to the other ranges, and therefore different flora and fauna. The area is famous for the Barbary macaque, a species of monkey that is only found in the region and the nearby island of Gibraltar, the only monkeys in Europe. Wild boars and marbled polecats, a weasel like animal,are also found in the region.
The winter is extremely cold, snow forms on the slopes of the mountains, and the area is home to the only ski-resort in Africa. It is famous for it's cedar trees, a type of fir tree that grow in the forests of the region.
Saharan Atlas
The Saharan Atlas is located to the South of the High Atlas and Middle Atlas, in Algeria and Tunisia. It is not as tall or vast as the other mountain ranges, but its large amount of rainfall along the southern mountain sides allows for farming which is not possible in other areas of the region. In the north the mountains rise to a large plateau that include salt lakes which are dry in the summer time and then fill during the rainy season. They are filled by rivers and are called wadis in Arabic.
Saharan Atlas
Tell Atlas
Tell Atlas
The Tell Atlas is a vast range that runs 1,500km across northern Algeria, north-eastern Morocco, and north-western Tunisia. It runs adjacent to the Mediterranean sea to the north, and create a natural land barrier between the Mediterranean and the Saharan desert. The average height of the mountains in this region are around 1,500km, and the highest point is just river 2,00m above sea level at Lalla Khedidja. The Algerian capital, Algiers,can be found at the base of the mountains and other large cities in the area bring the total population to over 2.7 million .
Plants & Animals
Plants - Fauna of the Atlas Range
The most famous plant from the Atlas mountains region is the Atlas cedar tree, a type of coniferous evergreen tree that grow in forests on the mountainsides. Coniferous trees produce cones as seeds, while evergreen means they have leaves all year round. They grow between 30 and 35 meters tall, at higher altitudes of 1,370 to 2,200 meters above sea level. There is an Atlas cedar planted in the gardens of the White House in the USA.
Plants &
Animals
Mammals
The Atlas mountains are home to a wide range of animals, including snakes, birds and a variety of mammals. The most well known of these is the Barbary Macaque, a type of monkey most famous for living in Gibraltar, an island in the Mediterranean between Spain & North Africa. They live in groups of 10-100, and are different from other macaques as the males spend a lot of time taking care of the infants. Another unique animal for the region is the Barbary Stag, the only species of deer that lives in Africa. They live in the forests of Morocco, Tunisia & Algeria.
Big Cats
BIg Cats
Africa is famous for the Big Cat family of animals such as lions, cheetahs and lions. Most of these live in sub-Saharan Africa, and only one big cat lives in the Maghreb. This is the African Leopard, but it is restricted to a small area in Morocco, on the mountainsides of the Atlas between 300-2,500m above sea level. In the past the Leopard was found over a wider area in North Africa, but hunting and habitat destruction has lowered the population.
The African Leopard has a very diverse diet, it eats anything from small dung beetles to large antelope. In the Atlas mountains their most common prey is the macaque monkeys, as leopards also climb trees.
Extinct species
Extinct
In ancient times a wide variety of animals now only found in Southern Africa, such as elephants & lions, lived in the Atlas region. It was also home to the only known species of African bear. However, during the Roman occupation of Africa from 150BC to 450AD the Romans killed or bought these animals home as trophies or to be used in fights as entertainment. This caused the number of bears, elephants & lions in the area to drop dramatically. Smaller scale hunting continued after the Romans, and the introduction of guns in the 18th Century made killing the animals easier. The last sightings of the Barbary Lion and Atlas Bear was in the mid 20th Century. The elephants died out much earlier, as nearly 3,500 were recorded as being killed in Roman games.
Geological Formation
Formation
The different ranges of the Atlas mountains were formed at different stages of history. The underlying rock (rock beneath the mountains) is much older than the mountains, as it was formed over 550 million years ago. The first range to be formed was the Anti-Atlas, around 300 million years ago when the African and American plates collided. Around 250 million years ago most of the current peaks of the Atlas mountains were underwater when the Earth's crust was separated from the mantle beneath it. Around 5 million years ago these peaks were lifted upwards when the southern end of the European plate crashed into the northern end of the African plate. Geologists are unsure whether subduction occurred at this time, or if actions within the Earth's mantle caused the Atlas range to rise.