The Sahara Desert is by far the largest desert in the world. It evokes images of sand dunes, camels, and just being really dry.

However, it didn't always use to be that way.

Quite recently, at least geologically speaking, it was a place with grasslands and forests.

While it disappeared and became a desert some think a green Sahara might return in the future.

Learn more about how the Sahara Desert wasn't always a desert

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. It might seem hard to believe, but the area we call the Sahara Desert once was a lush green place where humans and animals lived and thrived.

This wasn't something that occurred millions of years ago, or hundreds of thousands of years ago, or even 10,000 years ago.

Researchers have determined that the Sahara

might have only become a desert 5,500 years ago. That seems like a long time but

it really isn't that long at all geologically.

I'll start with a quick overview.

The Sahara Desert is the largest non-polar desert in the world.

Technically Antarctica is a desert and it's larger than the Sahara,

but it doesn't really evoke images of what we think of as a desert.

The Sahara basically makes up the entire northern quarter of the continent of Africa, save for the fertile areas around the coast and the Nile River Basin.

It has a total area of 9,200,000

square kilometers or 3,600,000 square miles, and that is approximately the same size as

the United States or China. Most of it lies within the countries of

Algeria, Libya, and Egypt. The countries immediately to the south,

Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Sudan, also have significant parts of their countries in the Sahara but are mostly in the semi-arid Sahel region which I'll discuss in a future episode.

The region consists mainly of rocky outcrops and sand dunes, some of which can reach 180 meters or 590 feet high.

And of course, some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded on Earth

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