PICTURES: "Drained" Oceans Reveal Epic Landscapes

August 7, 2009--The seas off the Bahamas can seem like a swimming pool, but strip away the ocean (illustration at top), and the edges of the islands' shallow Great Bahama Bank--where the light blue begins to turn dark in satellite images of the Caribbean--are revealed to be steep cliffs rising some 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) above a vast plain.

By comparison, Yosemite National Park's nearly 5,000-foot-tall (1,520-meter) Half Dome (bottom) is a molehill.


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