It's a favorite among petrologists because it's the only one of its kind, Hannes Mattsson, a researcher at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich, told NBC News.
The culprit is Ol Doinyo Lengai, a million-year old volcano just south of Lake Natron. "If a body falls anywhere else it decomposes very quickly, but on the edge of the lake, it just gets encrusted in salt and stays forever," David Harper, an ecologist at the University of Leicester who has visited Lake Natron four times, told NBC News.Ī calcified dove, from Nick Brandt's book Across The Ravaged Land, published by Abrams, New York. The lake is chock full of thousands more well-preserved carcasses - it's so alkaline, creatures that die and fall in don't decompose and wither, they simply get pickled. "I took these creatures as I found them on the shoreline, and then placed them in 'living' positions, bringing them back to 'life.'"īrandt's photographs are on display at the Hasted Kraeutler Gallery in New York City and will be published in a photo anthology by Abrams Books.īrandt's photographs have been making their way around the Web, but he's just scratched the surface. "I unexpectedly found the creatures - all manner of birds and bats - washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron in Northern Tanzania," Brandt told NBC News in an email. Lately, it's earned a reputation for washing up the bodies of small animals on its shores, each wrapped in a delicate crusty shroud.īrandt was captivated by startlingly well-preserved bodies of bats, flamingos, eagles and swallows, and created a whole series of photographs to document the eerie phenomenon. Natron is usually a toasty 80 degrees Fahrenheit and blood-red from bacteria, the only living things that can survive its deadly alkalinity. Nick Brandt / Courtesy of Hasted Kraeutler Gallery
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