the Badlands an area of land in the US, between the southwest of South Dakota and the northwest of Nebraska, where no crops can grow and there are strangely shaped rocks and hills. Barren region covering some 2,000 sq mi (5,200 sq km) of southwestern South Dakota, U.S. It has an extremely rugged landscape almost devoid of vegetation. It was created by cloudbursts that cut deep gullies in poorly cemented bedrock; its extensive fossil deposits have yielded the remains of such animals as the three-toed horse, camel, saber-toothed tiger, and rhinoceros. Badlands National Park (379 sq mi [982 sq km]), lying mostly between the Cheyenne and White rivers, was established as a national monument in 1939 and a national park in 1978
A landscape which is intricately dissected and characterized by a very fine drainage network with high drainage densities and short, steep slopes with narrow interfluves Badlands develop on surfaces with little or no vegetative cover, overlying unconsolidated or poorly cemented materials (clays, silts, or in some cases sandstones) sometimes with soluble minerals such as gypsum or halite GG