when people think of natural wonders they tend to focus on the big ones the grand canyon
victoria falls and while those are iconic they're also pretty hearty and destined
to last for the long haul nothing's likely to ruin the grand canyon anytime soon but
there have been many other wonders of nature that captured people's
imagination with their beauty their scale or their uniqueness that have
sadly vanished from the world entirely let's take a look at 10 that are lost to time
10. darwin's arch located in the galapagos islands near darwin island in particular darwin's arch is
one of the most iconic natural stone arches in the world even if you didn't know the name looking at
an image of it chances are you'd recognize it the arch had long been a popular destination for scuba
divers the rich life of the archipelago could be found all around it and attracted researchers and
tourists from around the world divers routinely encounter hammerhead and whale sharks manta rays
dolphins tuna hawksbill turtles and many other species and while you can still dive there and see
all these creatures you won't be doing it under the arch in may 2021 it collapsed into the sea
the result of natural erosion the two pillars that once supported the arch are still standing however
the cross piece is now part of the sea floor 9. the azure window if you were a game of thrones
fan you might be familiar with the azure window of malta the limestone arch extended out over the sea
and was the backdrop of a wedding in the first season of game of thrones and it's a good thing
that hbo got the footage when they could because that location just doesn't exist anymore the arch
had been suffering the effects of erosion for years you can only do so much to fight wind
rain and sea however a storm hit the coast of malta in 2017 with gale force winds that
the arch couldn't manage the entire structure collapsed into the sea leaving nothing behind
number 8. sequoia tunnel tree california's massive sequoia trees have been a tourist attraction for
ages one of the most iconic was the pioneer cabinetry back in the 1800s a tunnel was carved
into the trunk of the monstrous tree to allow people to pass through it the image is one of the
most recognizable forest images ever the huge tree towered 100 feet into the air and was 22 feet in
diameter it had been struck by lightning sometime in the 1800s and the base was carved out to allow
passage right through it in 1881 despite standing for centuries and serving as a tourist attraction
for decades nothing can take out nature quite like nature the tree was already suffering root issues
when a severe winter storm struck in january of 2017. the tree was unable to withstand the winds
and was taken down 7. the ice shelves the antarctic isn't known for a lot besides ice
and penguins for a time it seemed like those things were destined to stay there forever but
maybe that's not the case icebergs of massive sizes are breaking away from the continent with
more and more regularity in may 2021 the largest iceberg in the world broke away from the continent
it was bigger than the state of rhode island this was of course not the 315 billion ton iceberg that
broke off in 2019 or the trillion ton one that broke away in 2017. or the one that was also as
big as rhode island back in 2002. right now no one has any idea how much time the rest of the
ice in antarctica has but regardless of where the future takes things massive chunks have already
vanished and they're not coming back anytime soon jackal tyre glacier when most of us think of
skiing there are a few places that come to mind colorado perhaps british columbia switzerland
and france as well but what about bolivia the country actually did have a famous ski resort on
jackal tyre mountain it was over 17 000 feet above sea level making it the highest ski resort in the
world and surely something a true fan of the sport would want to check out at least once and if you
had that urge to go before 2019 you had a chance these days the resort is an abandoned building on
the rocky top of a mountain the reason being that the eighteen thousand year jackal tire glacier
had completely melted from existence by 2009 the resort was built in the 1930s and the loss of the
glacier was quite noticeable in the 1980s as poor precipitation and weather patterns eroded it away
in the 1990s researchers predicted that the glacier would be gone entirely by 2015.
her estimates were a few years off 5. the old man of the mountain also known as the great stone face
the old man of the mountain was really just a chunk of granite that when looked at from the
right angle bore a resemblance to a human profile people like finding patterns and familiar shapes
and things though and enough people could see the profile that it became a landmark the
granite cliffs were located on cannon mountain part of new hampshire's franconia notch state
park the massive face was 40 feet tall and held significance but the native tribes in the area
the abenaki people called it stone face according to legend it was once a man named niss kizoz who
waited on the mountain for the woman he loved to return to him after she had gone to a village to
attend to a sickness he stayed on the mountain looking for her every day but she never returned
she had died in her village and niz kizos's brother went up the mountain to share the tragic
news he found his brother had vanished and that he had become part of the mountain itself his face
staring out forever looking over the land in 2003 after staring out from the mountain for literally
thousands of years the old man disappeared extreme temperature shifts years of freezing and thawing
had cracked the stone until it could no longer endure attempts to fix it traced all the way back
to the 1920s when chains were fixed to hold it together in the 1950s the government spent 25 000
on a restoration project using cement and more to preserve it but it was clearly only a stop
gap number four great barrier reef no the great barrier reef isn't gone not yet anyway but things
are not looking good and it's only not gone if you look at it as a whole rather than the many pieces
that make it up the fact is since 1995 half of the coral and the great barrier reef has been lost
predictions for the future are grim some say the reef will be gone by 2050 if steps aren't taken to
preserve it now some have called this virtually impossible at this point the loss to the world
and to our oceans would be unprecedented the great barrier reef is one of the natural wonders of the
world and the largest coral reef in existence it's actually made up of nearly 3 000 smaller reefs
pollution and overfishing but most notably climate change have taken their toll on the reef upwards
of 25 percent of marine life is at risk of losing their habitat if the great barrier reef and reefs
like it are destroyed local fishing industries would be destroyed and without the reefer's
protection the coastal areas nearby would suffer serious erosion and weather-related damage among
other issues 3. pink and white terraces once recognized as a true wonder of the natural world
the pink and white terraces of new zealand were the largest deposits of silica sinter or gizarite
in the world these terraces were formed at lake ritumahana they were actually two terraces one
was the white one and one was the pink several hundred meters away they were formed as a result
of boiling geezes draining down the mountain over hundreds of years the water carried silica with
it that built up over time white in one place and pink in the other the result was a series
of stone plateaus like steps complete with pools on each level of the terraces that they created
the terraces were considered the eighth wonder of the world and drew in tourists from all over
and then in 1886 mount tarawera erupted the eruption buried the terraces as a crater formed
and swallowed them destroying the landscape and the nearby town while sending the terraces to the
bottom of the lake that was now far deeper than it had ever been before people have attempted to
rediscover the terraces over the years and there has been speculation that parts of them were not
destroyed but buried however there is not a lot of evidence to support the need for an excavation
of the land which is owned by the maori number two the aral sea the aral sea was located between
kazakhstan and uzbekistan and after the caspian sea lake superior and lake victoria was the fourth
largest lake on earth at just over 26 000 square miles that's all past tense of course because the
aral sea doesn't exist anymore known as the sea of islands there were over a thousand islands in the
lake things started going awry back in the 1960s when sea levels started dropping the reason the
soviet union the soviets had engaged in a number of irrigation projects that diverted rivers away
from the lake to other locations by 2014 the lake was almost entirely dried up called one of the
worst environmental disasters ever the loss of the lake has reshaped the landscape completely efforts
are still underway to preserve what remains of the lake which is now several smaller lakes the south
arrow and north arrow became separate projects with uzbekistan's south arrow essentially dying
out the north arrow in kazakhstan is still being preserved and there are even fish living in some
parts of it number one the tenere tree the zahara desert is mostly known for being the largest hot
desert in the world at over nine million square kilometers that space is almost exclusively taken
up by sand but there was one very unusual feature that had been known about for around 300 years
smack in the middle of all that nothing there was an acacia tree called the tenere tree you could
travel for 250 mars and not find another tree somehow that one plant managed to survive against
impossible odds right up until a drunk guy drove into it deserts are not eternal things and there
was a time when the sahara was more vibrant than it is today that was when the tree sprouted and it
was able to take root and grow and survive despite the changing world around it the tree itself
looked about as wise and as sad as any tree in the desert should but its roots were said to run 100
feet deep to find water in 1973 a truck driver following a road map of old trade routes plowed
right into the tree and destroyed it rim was he was drunk and you'd have to believe it was true
because how could anyone drive into literally the only thing for 250 miles in any direction
today the destroyed tree lives in a museum in niger while a metal tree was erected as
a landmark in the original's place so i really hope you found this video interesting if you did
please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and thank you for watching