The marshes are largely gone.

The specific ecological richness that supported early Holocene communities in the Lahontan Basin has been replaced by the desert that most people associate with Nevada — the stark, beautiful, demanding landscape of the Great Basin desert.

But beneath that surface transformation, the geology tells a different story.

The playas — the flat, dry lake beds that dot the Nevada landscape — are the floors of ancient lakes, preserved in the landforms even as the water has disappeared.

The tufa formations around Pyramid Lake — strange, otherworldly columns of calcium carbonate that rise from the lakeshore — were formed underwater, when the lake was deep and the carbonate-rich waters were actively depositing mineral formations around underwater springs.