English: Covering about 260,000 square miles (673,000 square kilometers) of the southern tip of Argentina, Patagonia has been called “South America’s southern frontier”, where “nature grows wild, barren, and beautiful”.

This true-color image of a portion of northern Patagonia, acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on board NASA’s Terra satellite on December 6, 2021, seems to validate that description. Colored in tans, browns, and ochre, and tinted with white swatches of salt pans, the semi-arid landscape is trisected by the confluence of the Limay River (south) and the Neuquén River (north) to form the Rio Negro. Several reservoirs dot the region, including Lake Los Barreales and Lake Mari Menuco, south of the Neuquén, Lake Pellegrini to its north, and Lake Ezequiel Ramos Mexia, formed by damming the Limay River.

Today, the lakes and the land closest to the beautiful braided rivers attract substantial populations in many small cities, such as Neuquén, which sits at the confluence of the Neuquén and Limay, and General Roca on the northern banks of the Rio Negro. The floodplains provide rich, moist soil for agriculture, while lakes serve as recreation, fisheries, and tourist attractions. This region is also rich in oil reserves and is one of the few places outside parts of the United States where horizontal drilling and fracking methods are used to harvest that oil.

In the past, however, this region was home to giants. From about 230 million years ago until their extinction at the end of the Triassic Period (65 million years ago), dinosaurs were the dominant life form on Earth. They were so widespread, that fossils have been found on every continent, including Antarctica. Some of the richest fossil finds have been in certain locations in the deserts and badlands of North America, in a few sections of China, and in Argentina.

This image captures one of the richest areas in Argentina, spreading from the deep red Candeleros Formation, sitting northwest of the Neuquén River to the rocks around the Lake Ezequiel Ramos Mexia. The first dinosaurs discovered in Patagonia were found in 1882, when a major in the Argentinian Army discovered some bones near the confluence of the Limay and Neuquén. Since that time, paleontologists have found the Candeleros rocks extremely rich in fossils, including ancient species of fish, frogs, snakes, turtles, small mammals, and several types of dinosaurs. One dinosaur found here is the Giganotosaurus carolinii—a carnivorous theropod thought to be larger and faster than Tyrannosaurs Rex.