This story appears in the November 2012 issue of National Geographic magazine. I got my first lesson in the physics of sand dunes in 1998 on an expedition into the Sahara. In order to take aerial ...

Behind many of these beaches are sand dune systems which provide homes for diverse forms of wildlife including plants and insects, some so highly specialised that without these dune habitats ...

This giant sand dune in southern Spain is about 98 feet high and 656 feet wide, making it one of Europe's largest sand dunes. What is perhaps even more fascinating is what hides beneath it.

Beneath a sand dune near Zaña, Peru ... probably looking at a five-thousand-year-old religious complex that is an architectural space defined by walls built of mud,” Dr. Luis Armando Muro ...