Great Sandy Desert Trivia Questions
How much do you really know about Great Sandy Desert? Below are 16 true or false statements. Click each one to reveal the answer and explanation.
1.The Great Sandy Desert is the largest desert in Australia by total area.
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Easy
The Great Sandy Desert is the largest desert in Australia by total area.
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It's the second largest; the Great Victoria Desert is bigger. Size confusion is common with these two.
2.The Great Sandy Desert spans across Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
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Easy
The Great Sandy Desert spans across Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
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The Great Sandy Desert lies mainly in Western Australia but extends eastward into the southwestern part of the Northern Territory.
3.Despite its name, the Great Sandy Desert receives more rainfall than the Amazon rainforest.
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Easy
Despite its name, the Great Sandy Desert receives more rainfall than the Amazon rainforest.
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It's extremely dry, with less than 250mm annually, while the Amazon gets over 2,000mm. Completely false.
4.The Great Sandy Desert is the largest desert in Australia.
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Easy
The Great Sandy Desert is the largest desert in Australia.
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The Great Sandy Desert is the second largest. The largest Australian desert is the Great Victoria Desert, which covers over 348,750 square kilometers.
5.The Great Sandy Desert is home to the Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater.
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Medium
The Great Sandy Desert is home to the Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater.
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Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater is located within the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia. It is one of the best-preserved meteorite impact craters on Earth.
6.The Great Sandy Desert is the second largest desert in Australia.
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Medium
The Great Sandy Desert is the second largest desert in Australia.
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The largest Australian desert is the Great Victoria Desert. The Great Sandy Desert ranks second, covering about 284,993 square kilometers in northwestern Australia.
7.Large parts of the Great Sandy Desert are covered in red sand dunes that can reach 30 meters high.
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Medium
Large parts of the Great Sandy Desert are covered in red sand dunes that can reach 30 meters high.
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Iron oxide gives the sand a red hue, and dunes like those in the Simpson Desert can be huge, though the Great Sandy has them too.
8.The Great Sandy Desert is located in Australia, not Africa or the Middle East.
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Medium
The Great Sandy Desert is located in Australia, not Africa or the Middle East.
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It's in northwestern Australia, part of the country's vast arid interior, often mistaken for a Sahara-like desert elsewhere.
9.No permanent human settlements exist within the Great Sandy Desert due to extreme conditions.
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Medium
No permanent human settlements exist within the Great Sandy Desert due to extreme conditions.
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Indigenous communities like the Martu people have lived there for millennia, with settlements such as Jigalong.
10.The Great Sandy Desert is located in the center of Australia.
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Medium
The Great Sandy Desert is located in the center of Australia.
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The Great Sandy Desert lies in northwestern Australia, near the coast. Central Australia is dominated by the Great Victoria and Gibson deserts.
11.The Great Sandy Desert was named for its fertile sandy soil.
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Medium
The Great Sandy Desert was named for its fertile sandy soil.
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The Great Sandy Desert was named for its vast area of red sand dunes and sparse vegetation. It is extremely arid and not fertile for farming.
12.The Great Sandy Desert receives over 500 millimeters of rainfall annually.
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Medium
The Great Sandy Desert receives over 500 millimeters of rainfall annually.
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The Great Sandy Desert is an arid region with average annual rainfall typically below 250 mm, often less than 150 mm in many areas.
13.The desert contains one of the longest known chains of permanent waterholes in the world.
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Hard
The desert contains one of the longest known chains of permanent waterholes in the world.
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The Canning Stock Route has a series of rock holes and soaks, some ancient, that sustain life across the arid expanse.
14.The desert was formed by the collision of tectonic plates pushing up a massive mountain range.
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Hard
The desert was formed by the collision of tectonic plates pushing up a massive mountain range.
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It's an ancient, eroded landscape, not created by recent tectonic uplift. The region is a flat sedimentary basin.
15.The Great Sandy Desert contains the Canning Stock Route.
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Hard
The Great Sandy Desert contains the Canning Stock Route.
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The Canning Stock Route, a historic 1,850‑km track, runs through the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia, originally built to move cattle.
16.The desert is home to the world's largest population of feral camels.
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Hard
The desert is home to the world's largest population of feral camels.
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Australia has over a million feral camels, many roaming the Great Sandy Desert, descended from 19th-century imports.
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