text: On December 7, 2005, the film had its world premiere in London as the 59th Royal Film Performance, an event held in aid of The Film and Television Charity. The event took place at the Royal Albert Hall and was attended by the then Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall. The film was released December 8, 2005, in the United Kingdom and December 9, 2005, in North America and the rest of Europe.


title: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

text: Worldwide, "Narnia" earned $745,013,115 marking it the 55th-highest-grossing film of all time worldwide. It had a worldwide opening of $107.1 million, marking Disney's fifth-largest opening worldwide (at the time it was the largest). It is the third-largest movie worldwide among those released in 2005 and it currently still remains the highest-grossing movie of the "Narnia" franchise worldwide, and separately in North America and overseas. Finally, it is also the most successful film of Walden Media worldwide.


text: The film opened with $23,006,856 on around 6,800 screens at 3,616 theatres on its opening day (Friday, December 9, 2005), averaging $6,363 per theater or $3,383 per screen. The film took in a total of $65,556,312 on its opening weekend (December 9–11, 2005), the 24th-best opening weekend at the time (now 54th). It was also Disney's third-largest opening weekend at the time (now the 34th-largest) as well as the second-biggest December opening, behind "". It is now fourth following the 2012 opening of "", the 2007 release of "I Am Legend", and the 2009 release of "Avatar" as well. Additionally, it made the third-largest opening weekend of 2005. It grossed $291,710,957 in total becoming the second-highest-grossing film of 2005 behind "". It surpassed the gross of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" by only $1.7 million, although the latter grossed $895.9 million worldwide, ahead of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe". It is the highest-grossing film of the 2005 holiday period, the second-highest-grossing "Christian" film, the sixth-largest family–children's book adaptation, the ninth-highest-grossing fantasy–live-action film and the 10th-highest-grossing film overall in Disney company history. Finally, it is the largest film of Walden Media worldwide. Box Office Mojo estimates that the film sold over 45 million tickets in North America.


text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 76% based on 217 reviews, with an average rating of 7.00/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "With first-rate special effects and compelling storytelling, this adaptation stays faithful to its source material and will please moviegoers of all ages." On Metacritic the film holds an average weighted score of 75 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". CinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film a rare "A+" grade.


text: Critic Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars. "Ebert and Roeper" gave the movie "Two Thumbs Up". Movie critic Leonard Maltin gave the film 3 out of four stars, calling it, "an impressive and worthwhile family film," though he also said, "it does go on a bit and the special effects are extremely variable." Duane Dudak of the "Milwaukee Journal Sentinel" gave the movie 3 out of 4 stars. Stuart Klawans of "The Nation" said, "All ticket buyers will get their money's worth." Elizabeth Weitzman of "New York Daily News" gave it 4 out of 4 stars and said: "A generation-spanning journey that feels both comfortingly familiar and excitingly original." Critic Mick LaSalle of the "San Francisco Chronicle" listed it as the second best film of the year. Kit Bowen gave the film 3 out of 4 stars.


text: However, John Anderson from "Newsday", reacted negatively to the film, stating, "…there's a deliberateness, a fastidiousness and a lack of daring and vision that marks the entire operation."


text: "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" won several awards including the Academy Award for Best Makeup; the BeliefNet Film Award for Best Spiritual film; the Movieguide Faith & Values Awards: Most Inspiring Movie of 2005 and Best Family Movie of 2005; and the CAMIE (Character and Morality In Entertainment) Award. Others include the British Academy Film Awards for Makeup and Hair and Orange Rising Star (James McAvoy); Outstanding Motion Picture, Animated or Mixed Media; the Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Performance by a Youth in a Lead or Supporting Role (Georgie Henley, Female); the Costume Designers Guild Award for Excellence in Fantasy Film (Isis Mussenden); and the Saturn Award for Costumes (Isis Mussenden) and Make-up (Howard Berger, Greg Nicotero, and Nikki Gooley).


text: Georgie Henley received critical acclaim for her performance as Lucy Pevensie. She won several awards, including the Phoenix Film Critics Society award for Best Actress in a Leading Role and Best Performance by a Youth. She also won other awards either for Best Young Performance or Best Actress in a Leading Role.


text: The DVD for "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" was released on April 4, 2006. It is available in a standard one-disc set (with separate full-screen and widescreen editions), and a deluxe widescreen two-disc boxed set with additional artwork and other materials from Disney and Walden Media. The DVD sold four million copies on its first day of release and overtook "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" to become the top-selling DVD in North America for 2006. As of December 2008 it has grossed $353.5 million in DVD sales, equivalent to 12,458,637 units sold.


text: Disney later issued a four-disc extended cut of the film on DVD. It was released on December 12, 2006, and was available commercially until January 31, 2007, after which Disney put the DVD on moratorium. The extended cut of the film runs approximately 150 minutes. The set includes all of the features previously released on the two-disc special edition. The two additional discs include a segment called "The Dreamer of Narnia", a previously unreleased feature-length film about C. S. Lewis, and additional production featurettes. Most of the extended footage, besides the extended battle sequence, is longer establishing shots of Narnia and footage of the Pevensies walking in Narnia.


text: The high-definition Blu-ray Disc version was released on May 13, 2008, in the United States, and on June 16, 2008, in the United Kingdom.


title: Zombie

text: A zombie (Haitian French: , ) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in which a "zombie" is a dead body reanimated through various methods, most commonly magic like voodoo. Modern media depictions of the reanimation of the dead often do not involve magic but rather science fictional methods such as carriers, radiation, mental diseases, vectors, pathogens, parasites, scientific accidents, etc.


title: Zombie

text: The English word "zombie" was first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey, in the form of "zombi". The "Oxford English Dictionary" gives the word's origin as Central African and compares it to the Kongo words (god) and or (fetish). Some authors also compare it to the Kongo word (ghost, revenant, corpse that still retains the soul), (body without a soul). A Kimbundu-to-Portuguese dictionary from 1903 defines the related word "" as soul, while a later Kimbundu–Portuguese dictionary defines it as being a "spirit that is supposed to wander the earth to torment the living". One of the first books to expose Western culture to the concept of the voodoo zombie was W. B. Seabrook's "The Magic Island" (1929), the account of a narrator who encounters voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls.


title: Zombie

text: A new version of the zombie, distinct from that described in Haitian folklore, emerged in popular culture during the latter half of the 20th century. This interpretation of the zombie is drawn largely from George A. Romero's film "Night of the Living Dead" (1968), which was partly inspired by Richard Matheson's novel "I Am Legend" (1954). The word "zombie" is not used in "Night of the Living Dead", but was applied later by fans. After zombie films such as "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) and Michael Jackson's music video "Thriller" (1983), the genre waned for some years.


title: Zombie

text: An evolution of the zombie archetype came with the video games "Resident Evil" and "The House of the Dead" in the late 1990s, with their more scientific and action-oriented approach and their introduction of fast-running zombies, leading to a resurgence of zombies in popular culture. These games were initially followed by a wave of low-budget Asian zombie films such as the zombie comedy "Bio Zombie" (1998) and action film "Versus" (2000), and then a new wave of popular Western zombie films in the early 2000s, including films featuring fast-running zombies—such as "28 Days Later" (2002), the "Resident Evil" and "House of the Dead" films, the 2004 "Dawn of the Dead" remake, and the British zombie comedy "Shaun of the Dead" (2004). The "zombie apocalypse" concept, in which the civilized world is brought low by a global zombie infestation, has since become a staple of modern popular art, seen in such media as "The Walking Dead" franchise.


title: Zombie

text: The late 2000s and 2010s saw the humanization and , with the zombies increasingly portrayed as friends and love interests for humans. Notable examples of the latter include movies "Warm Bodies" and "Zombies", novels "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman, "Generation Dead" by Daniel Waters, and "Bone Song" by John Meaney, animated movie "Corpse Bride", TV series "Pushing Daisies" and "iZombie", and manga/novel/anime series "" and "Is This a Zombie?" In this context, zombies are often seen as stand-ins for discriminated groups struggling for equality, and the human–zombie romantic relationship is interpreted as a metaphor for sexual liberation and taboo breaking (given that zombies are subject to wild desires and free from social conventions).


title: Zombie

text: The English word "zombie" is first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the poet Robert Southey, in the form of "zombi", actually referring to the Afro-Brazilian rebel leader named Zumbi and the etymology of his name in "nzambi". The "Oxford English Dictionary" gives the origin of the word as Central African and compares it to the Kongo words "nzambi" (god) and "zumbi" (fetish).


title: Zombie

text: In Haitian folklore, a "zombie" (Haitian French: , ) is an animated corpse raised by magical means, such as witchcraft.


title: Zombie

text: The concept has been popularly associated with the religion of voodoo, but it plays no part in that faith's formal practices.


title: Zombie

text: How the creatures in contemporary zombie films came to be called "zombies" is not fully clear. The film "Night of the Living Dead" made no spoken reference to its undead antagonists as "zombies", describing them instead as "ghouls" (though ghouls, which derive from Arabic folklore, are demons, not undead). Although George Romero used the term "ghoul" in his original scripts, in later interviews he used the term "zombie". The word "zombie" is used exclusively by Romero in his script for his sequel "Dawn of the Dead" (1978), including once in dialog. According to George Romero, film critics were influential in associating the term "zombie" to his creatures, and especially the French magazine . He eventually accepted this linkage, even though he remained convinced at the time that "zombies" corresponded to the undead slaves of Haitian voodoo as depicted in "White Zombie" with Bela Lugosi.


title: Zombie

text: Zombies are featured widely in Haitian rural folklore as dead persons physically revived by the act of necromancy of a "bokor", a sorcerer or witch. The "bokor" is opposed by the "houngan" (priest) and the "mambo" (priestess) of the formal voodoo religion. A zombie remains under the control of the "bokor" as a personal slave, having no will of its own.


title: Zombie

text: The Haitian tradition also includes an incorporeal type of zombie, the "zombie astral", which is a part of the human soul. A "bokor" can capture a zombie astral to enhance his spiritual power. A zombie astral can also be sealed inside a specially decorated bottle by a "bokor" and sold to a client to bring luck, healing, or business success. It is believed that God eventually will reclaim the zombie's soul, so the zombie is a temporary spiritual entity.


title: Zombie

text: The two types of zombie reflect soul dualism, a belief of Haitian voodoo. Each type of legendary zombie is therefore missing one half of its soul (the flesh or the spirit).


title: Zombie

text: The zombie belief has its roots in traditions brought to Haiti by enslaved Africans and their subsequent experiences in the New World. It was thought that the voodoo deity Baron Samedi would gather them from their grave to bring them to a heavenly afterlife in Africa ("Guinea"), unless they had offended him in some way, in which case they would be forever a slave after death, as a zombie. A zombie could also be saved by feeding them salt. English professor Amy Wilentz has written that the modern concept of Zombies was strongly influenced by Haitian slavery. Slave drivers on the plantations, who were usually slaves themselves and sometimes voodoo priests, used the fear of zombification to discourage slaves from committing suicide.


title: Zombie

text: While most scholars have associated the Haitian zombie with African cultures, a connection has also been suggested to the island's indigenous Taíno people, partly based on an early account of native shamanist practices written by the Hieronymite monk Ramón Pané (Spanish-language article – English translation via Google Translate), a companion of Christopher Columbus.


title: Zombie

text: The Haitian zombie phenomenon first attracted widespread international attention during the United States occupation of Haiti (1915–1934), when a number of case histories of purported "zombies" began to emerge. The first popular book covering the topic was William Seabrook's "The Magic Island" (1929). Seabrooke cited Article 246 of the Haitian criminal code, which was passed in 1864, asserting that it was an official recognition of zombies. This passage was later used in promotional materials for the 1932 film "White Zombie".


title: Zombie

text: In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the case of a woman who appeared in a village. A family claimed that she was Felicia Felix-Mentor, a relative, who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29. The woman was examined by a doctor; X-rays indicated that she did not have a leg fracture that Felix-Mentor was known to have had. Hurston pursued rumors that affected persons were given a powerful psychoactive drug, but she was unable to locate individuals willing to offer much information. She wrote: "What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Vodou in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony."


title: Zombie

text: A Central African origin for the Haitian zombie has been postulated based on two etymologies in the Kongo language, "nzambi" ("god") and "zumbi" ("fetish"). This root helps form the names of several deities, including the Kongo creator deity Nzambi a Mpungu and the Louisiana serpent deity Li Grand Zombi (a local version of the Haitian Damballa), but it is in fact a generic word for a divine spirit. The common African conception of beings under these names is more similar to the incorporeal "zombie astral", as in the Kongo Nkisi spirits.


title: Zombie

text: A related, but also often incorporeal, undead being is the jumbee of the English-speaking Caribbean, considered to be of the same etymology; in the French West Indies also, local "zombies" are recognized, but these are of a more general spirit nature.


title: Zombie

text: The idea of physical zombie-like creatures is present in some South African cultures, where they are called "xidachane" in Sotho/Tsonga and "maduxwane" in Venda. In some communities, it is believed that a dead person can be zombified by a small child. It is said that the spell can be broken by a powerful enough sangoma. It is also believed in some areas of South Africa that witches can zombify a person by killing and possessing the victim's body to force it into slave labor. After rail lines were built to transport migrant workers, stories emerged about "witch trains". These trains appeared ordinary, but were staffed by zombified workers controlled by a witch. The trains would abduct a person boarding at night, and the person would then either be zombified or beaten and thrown from the train a distance away from the original location.


title: Zombie

text: Several decades after Hurston's work, Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist, presented a pharmacological case for zombies in a 1983 article in the "Journal of Ethnopharmacology", and later in two popular books: "The Serpent and the Rainbow" (1985) and "Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie" (1988).


title: Zombie

text: Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being introduced into the blood stream (usually through a wound). The first, ("powder strike"), includes tetrodotoxin (TTX), a powerful and frequently fatal neurotoxin found in the flesh of the pufferfish (family Tetraodontidae). The second powder consists of deliriant drugs such as datura. Together these powders were said to induce a deathlike state, in which the will of the victim would be entirely subjected to that of the bokor. Davis also popularized the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice. The most ethically questioned and least scientifically explored ingredient of the powders is part of a recently buried child's brain.


title: Zombie

text: The process described by Davis was an initial state of deathlike suspended animation, followed by re-awakening — typically "after" being buried — into a psychotic state. The psychosis induced by the drug and psychological trauma was hypothesised by Davis to reinforce culturally learned beliefs and to cause the individual to reconstruct their identity as that of a zombie, since they "knew" that they were dead and had no other role to play in the Haitian society. Societal reinforcement of the belief was hypothesized by Davis to confirm for the zombie individual the zombie state, and such individuals were known to hang around in graveyards, exhibiting attitudes of low affect.


title: Zombie

text: Davis's claim has been criticized, particularly the suggestion that Haitian witch doctors can keep "zombies" in a state of pharmacologically induced trance for many years. Symptoms of TTX poisoning range from numbness and nausea to paralysis — particularly of the muscles of the diaphragm — unconsciousness, and death, but do not include a stiffened gait or a deathlike trance. According to psychologist Terence Hines, the scientific community dismisses tetrodotoxin as the cause of this state, and Davis' assessment of the nature of the reports of Haitian zombies is viewed as overly credulous.


title: Zombie

text: Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing highlighted the link between social and cultural expectations and compulsion, in the context of schizophrenia and other mental illness, suggesting that schizogenesis may account for some of the psychological aspects of zombification. Particularly, this suggests cases where schizophrenia manifests a state of catatonia.


title: Zombie

text: Roland Littlewood, professor of anthropology and psychiatry, published a study supporting a social explanation of the zombie phenomenon in the medical journal "The Lancet" in 1997.


title: Zombie

text: The social explanation sees observed cases of people identified as zombies as a culture-bound syndrome, with a particular cultural form of adoption practiced in Haiti that unites the homeless and mentally ill with grieving families who see them as their "returned" lost loved ones, as Littlewood summarizes his findings in an article in "Times Higher Education":


title: Zombie

text: Pulliam and Fonseca (2014) and Walz (2006) trace the zombie lineage back to ancient Mesopotamia. In the "Descent of Ishtar", the goddess Ishtar threatens:


title: Zombie

text: One of the first books to expose Western culture to the concept of the voodoo zombie was "The Magic Island" (1929) by W. B. Seabrook. This is the sensationalized account of a narrator who encounters voodoo cults in Haiti and their resurrected thralls. "Time" commented that the book "introduced 'zombi' into U.S. speech". Zombies have a complex literary heritage, with antecedents ranging from Richard Matheson and H. P. Lovecraft to Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" drawing on European folklore of the undead. Victor Halperin directed "White Zombie" (1932), a horror film starring Bela Lugosi. Here zombies are depicted as mindless, unthinking henchmen under the spell of an evil magician. Zombies, often still using this voodoo-inspired rationale, were initially uncommon in cinema, but their appearances continued sporadically through the 1930s to the 1960s, with films including "I Walked with a Zombie" (1943) and "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (1959).


title: Zombie

text: "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley, while not a zombie novel "per se", foreshadows many 20th century ideas about zombies in that the resurrection of the dead is portrayed as a scientific process rather than a mystical one and that the resurrected dead are degraded and more violent than their living selves. "Frankenstein", published in 1818, has its roots in European folklore, whose tales of the vengeful dead also informed the evolution of the modern conception of the vampire. Later notable 19th century stories about the avenging undead included Ambrose Bierce's "The Death of Halpin Frayser" and various Gothic Romanticism tales by Edgar Allan Poe. Though their works could not be properly considered zombie fiction, the supernatural tales of Bierce and Poe would prove influential on later writers such as H. P. Lovecraft, by Lovecraft's own admission.


title: Zombie

text: In the 1920s and early 1930s, Lovecraft wrote several novellae that explored the undead theme. "Cool Air", "In the Vault" and "The Outsider" all deal with the undead, but Lovecraft's "Herbert West–Reanimator" (1921) "helped define zombies in popular culture". This series of short stories featured Herbert West, a mad scientist, who attempts to revive human corpses, with mixed results. Notably, the resurrected dead are uncontrollable, mostly mute, primitive and extremely violent; though they are not referred to as zombies, their portrayal was prescient, anticipating the modern conception of zombies by several decades. Edgar Rice Burroughs similarly depicted animated corpses in the second book of his Venus series, again without using the terms "zombie" or "undead".


title: Zombie

text: Avenging zombies would feature prominently in the early 1950s EC Comics, which George A. Romero would later claim as an influence. The comics, including "Tales from the Crypt", "The Vault of Horror" and "Weird Science", featured avenging undead in the Gothic tradition quite regularly, including adaptations of Lovecraft's stories, which included "In the Vault", "Cool Air" and "Herbert West–Reanimator".


title: Zombie

text: Richard Matheson's 1954 novel "I Am Legend", although classified as a vampire story, had a great impact on the zombie genre by way of George A. Romero. The novel and its 1964 film adaptation, "The Last Man on Earth", which concern a lone human survivor waging war against a world of vampires, would by Romero's own admission greatly influence his 1968 low-budget film "Night of the Living Dead", a work that was more influential on the concept of zombies than any literary or cinematic work before it. The monsters in the film and its sequels, such as "Dawn of the Dead" (1978) and "Day of the Dead" (1985), as well as the many zombie films it inspired, such as "The Return of the Living Dead" (1985) and "Zombi 2" (1979), are usually hungry for human flesh, although "Return of the Living Dead" introduced the popular concept of zombies eating human brains.


title: Zombie

text: There has been an evolution in the zombie archetype from supernatural to scientific themes. "I Am Legend" and "Night of the Living Dead" began the shift away from Haitian dark magic, though did not give scientific explanations for zombie origins. A more decisive shift towards scientific themes came with the "Resident Evil" video game series in the late 1990s, which gave more realistic scientific explanations for zombie origins while drawing on modern science and technology, such as biological weaponry, genetic manipulation and parasitic symbiosis. This became the standard approach for explaining zombie origins in popular fiction that followed "Resident Evil".


title: Zombie

text: There has also been shift towards an action approach, which has led to another evolution of the zombie archietype, the "fast zombie" or running zombie. In contrast to Romero's classic slow zombies, "fast zombies" can run, are more aggressive and are often more intelligent. This type of zombie has origins in 1990s Japanese horror video games. In 1996, Capcom's survival horror video game "Resident Evil" featured zombie dogs that run towards the player. Later the same year, Sega's arcade shooter "The House of the Dead" introduced running human zombies, who run towards the player and can also jump and swim. The running human zombies introduced in "The House of the Dead" video games became the basis for the "fast zombies" that became popular in zombie films during the early 21st century, starting with "28 Days Later" (2002), the "Resident Evil" and "House of the Dead" films and the 2004 "Dawn of the Dead" remake. These films also adopted an action approach to the zombie concept, which was also influenced by the "Resident Evil" and "House of the Dead" video games.


title: Zombie

text: Films featuring zombies have been a part of cinema since the 1930s. "White Zombie" (directed by Victor Halperin in 1932) and "I Walked with a Zombie" (directed by Jacques Tourneur; 1943) were early examples. With George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" (1968), the zombie trope began to be increasingly linked to consumerism and consumer culture. Today, zombie films are released with such regularity (at least 55 films were released in 2014 alone) that they constitute a separate subgenre of horror film.


title: Zombie

text: Voodoo-related zombie themes have also appeared in espionage or adventure-themed works outside the horror genre. For example, the original "Jonny Quest" series (1964) and the James Bond novel "Live and Let Die" as well as its film adaptation both feature Caribbean villains who falsely claim the voodoo power of zombification to keep others in fear of them.


title: Zombie

text: George Romero's modern zombie archetype in "Night of the Living Dead" was influenced by several earlier zombie-themed films, including "White Zombie", "Revolt of the Zombies" (1936) and "The Plague of the Zombies" (1966). Romero was also inspired by Richard Matheson's novel "I Am Legend" (1954), along with its film adaptation, "The Last Man on Earth" (1964).


title: Zombie

text: The modern conception of the zombie owes itself almost entirely to George A. Romero's 1968 film "Night of the Living Dead". In his films, Romero "bred the zombie with the vampire, and what he got was the hybrid vigour of a ghoulish plague monster". This entailed an apocalyptic vision of monsters that have come to be known as Romero zombies.


title: Zombie

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" chided theater owners and parents who allowed children access to the film. "I don't think the younger kids really knew what hit them", complained Ebert, "They were used to going to movies, sure, and they'd seen some horror movies before, sure, but this was something else." According to Ebert, the film affected the audience immediately:


title: Zombie

text: The kids in the audience were stunned. There was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying.


title: Zombie

text: Romero's reinvention of zombies is notable in terms of its thematics; he used zombies not just for their own sake, but as a vehicle "to criticize real-world social ills—such as government ineptitude, bioengineering, slavery, greed and exploitation—while indulging our post-apocalyptic fantasies". "Night" was the first of six films in Romero's "Living Dead" series. Its first sequel, "Dawn of the Dead", was released in 1978.


title: Zombie

text: Lucio Fulci's "Zombi 2" was released just months after "Dawn of the Dead" as an ersatz sequel ("Dawn of the Dead" was released in several other countries as "Zombi" or "Zombie"). "Dawn of the Dead" was the most commercially successful zombie film for decades, up until the zombie revival of the 2000s. The 1981 film "Hell of the Living Dead" referenced a mutagenic gas as a source of zombie contagion: an idea also used in Dan O'Bannon's 1985 film "Return of the Living Dead". "Return of the Living Dead" featured zombies that hungered specifically for human brains.


title: Zombie

text: Zombie films in the 1980s and 1990s were not as commercially successful as "Dawn of the Dead" in the late 1970s. The mid-1980s produced few zombie films of note. Perhaps the most notable entry, the "Evil Dead" trilogy, while highly influential, are not technically zombie films, but films about demonic possession, despite the presence of the undead. 1985's "Re-Animator", loosely based on the Lovecraft story, stood out in the genre, achieving nearly unanimous critical acclaim and becoming a modest success, nearly outstripping Romero's "Day of the Dead" for box office returns.


title: Zombie

text: After the mid-1980s, the subgenre was mostly relegated to the underground. Notable entries include director Peter Jackson's ultra-gory film "Braindead" (1992) (released as "Dead Alive" in the U.S.), Bob Balaban's comic 1993 film "My Boyfriend's Back", where a self-aware high-school boy returns to profess his love for a girl and his love for human flesh, and Michele Soavi's "Dellamorte Dellamore" (1994) (released as "Cemetery Man" in the U.S.).


title: Zombie

text: In 1980s Hong Kong cinema, the Chinese jiangshi, a zombie-like creature dating back to Qing dynasty era jiangshi fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries, were featured in a wave of jiangshi films, popularised by "Mr. Vampire" (1985). Hong Kong jiangshi films were popular in the Far East from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s.


title: Zombie

text: Prior to the 1990s, there were not many Japanese films related to what may be considered in the West as a zombie film. Early films such as "The Discarnates" (1988) feature little gore and no cannibalism, but it is about the dead returning to life looking for love rather than a story of apocalyptic destruction. One of the earliest Japanese zombie films with considerable gore and violence was "" (1991).


title: Zombie

text: According to Kim Newman in the book "Nightmare Movies" (2011), the "zombie revival began in the Far East" during the late 1990s, largely inspired by two Japanese zombie games released in 1996: Capcom's "Resident Evil", which started the "Resident Evil" video game series that went on to sell 24 million copies worldwide by 2006, and Sega's arcade shooter "House of the Dead". The success of these two 1996 zombie games inspired a wave of Asian zombie films. From the late 1990s, zombies experienced a renaissance in low-budget Asian cinema, with a sudden spate of dissimilar entries, including "Bio Zombie" (1998), "Wild Zero" (1999), "Junk" (1999), "Versus" (2000) and "Stacy" (2001).


title: Zombie

text: Most Japanese zombie films emerged in the wake of "Resident Evil", such as "Versus", "Wild Zero", and "Junk", all from 2000. The zombie films released after "Resident Evil" behaved similarly to the zombie films of the 1970s, except that they were influenced by zombie video games, which inspired them to dwell more on the action compared to the older Romero films.


title: Zombie

text: The zombie revival, which began in the Far East, eventually went global, following the worldwide success of the Japanese zombie games "Resident Evil" and "The House of the Dead". "Resident Evil" in particular sparked a revival of the zombie genre in popular culture, leading to a renewed global interest in zombie films during the early 2000s. In addition to being adapted into the "Resident Evil" and "House of the Dead" films from 2002 onwards, the original video games themselves also inspired zombie films such as "28 Days Later" (2002) and "Shaun of the Dead" (2004). This led to the revival of zombie films in global popular culture.


title: Zombie

text: The turn of the millennium coincided with a decade of box office successes in which the zombie subgenre experienced a resurgence: the "Resident Evil" movies (2002–2016), the British films "28 Days Later" and "28 Weeks Later" (2007), the "Dawn of the Dead" remake (2004), and the comedies "Shaun of the Dead" and "Dance of the Dead" (2008). The new interest allowed Romero to create the fourth entry in his zombie series: "Land of the Dead", released in the summer of 2005. Romero returned to the series with the films "Diary of the Dead" (2008) and "Survival of the Dead" (2010). Generally, the zombies in these shows are the slow, lumbering and unintelligent kind, first made popular in "Night of the Living Dead". The "Resident Evil" films, "28 Days Later" and the "Dawn of the Dead" remake all set box office records for the zombie genre, reaching levels of commercial success not seen since the original "Dawn of the Dead" in 1978.


title: Zombie

text: Motion pictures created in the 2000s, like "28 Days Later", the "House of the Dead" and "Resident Evil" films, and the "Dawn of the Dead" remake, have featured zombies that are more agile, vicious, intelligent, and stronger than the traditional zombie. These new type of zombies, the fast zombie or running zombie, have origins in video games, with "Resident Evil"s running zombie dogs and especially "The House of the Dead" game's running human zombies.


title: Zombie

text: The success of "Shaun of the Dead" led to more successful zombie comedies during the late 2000s to early 2010s, such as "Zombieland" (2009) and "Cockneys vs Zombies" (2012). By 2011, the "Resident Evil" film adaptations had also become the highest-grossing film series based on video games, after they grossed more than worldwide. In 2013, the AMC series "The Walking Dead" had the highest audience ratings in the United States for any show on broadcast or cable with an average of 5.6 million viewers in the 18- to 49-year-old demographic. The film "World War Z" became the highest-grossing zombie film, and one of the highest-grossing films of 2013.


title: Zombie

text: At the same time, starting from the mid-2000s, a new type of zombie film has been growing in popularity: the one in which zombies are portrayed as humanlike in appearance and behavior, retaining the personality traits they had in life, and becoming friends or even romantic partners for humans rather than a threat to humanity. Notable examples of human–zombie romance include the stop-motion animated movie "Corpse Bride", live-action movies "Warm Bodies", "Camille", "Life After Beth", "Burying the Ex", and "Nina Forever", and TV series "Pushing Daisies" and "Babylon Fields". According to zombie scholar Scott Rogers, "what we are seeing in "Pushing Daisies", "Warm Bodies", and "iZombie" is in many ways the same transformation [of the zombies] that we have witnessed with vampires since the 1931 "Dracula" represented Dracula as essentially human—a significant departure from the monstrous representation in the 1922 film "Nosferatu"". Rogers also notes the accompanying visual transformation of the living dead: while the "traditional" zombies are marked by noticeable disfigurement and decomposition, the "romantic" zombies show little or no such traits.


title: Zombie

text: In the late 2010s, zombie films began declining in popularity, with elevated horror films gradually taking their place, such as "The Witch" (2015), "Get Out" (2016), "A Quiet Place" (2018) and "Hereditary" (2018). An exception is the low-budget Japanese zombie comedy "One Cut of the Dead" (2017), which became a sleeper hit in Japan, and it made box office history by earning over a thousand times its budget. "One Cut of the Dead" also received worldwide acclaim, with Rotten Tomatoes stating that it "reanimates the moribund zombie genre with a refreshing blend of formal daring and clever satire".


title: Zombie

text: The "romantic zombie" angle still remains popular, however: the late 2010s and early 2020s saw the release of the TV series "American Gods" and "iZombie", as well as the 2018 Disney Channel Original Movie "Zombies" and sequels "Zombies 2" (2020) and "Zombies 3" (2022).


title: Zombie

text: Intimately tied to the concept of the modern zombie is that of the "zombie apocalypse": the breakdown of society as a result of an initial zombie outbreak that spreads quickly. This archetype has emerged as a prolific subgenre of apocalyptic fiction and has been portrayed in many zombie-related media after "Night of the Living Dead". In a zombie apocalypse, a widespread (usually global) rise of zombies hostile to human life engages in a general assault on civilization. Victims of zombies may become zombies themselves. This causes the outbreak to become an exponentially growing crisis: the spreading phenomenon swamps normal military and law-enforcement organizations, leading to the panicked collapse of civilized society until only isolated pockets of survivors remain, scavenging for food and supplies in a world reduced to a pre-industrial hostile wilderness. Possible causes for zombie behavior in a modern population can be attributed to viruses, bacteria or other phenomena that reduce the mental capacity of humans, causing them to behave in a very primitive and destructive fashion.


title: Zombie

text: The usual subtext of the zombie apocalypse is that civilization is inherently vulnerable to the unexpected, and that most individuals, if desperate enough, cannot be relied on to comply with the author's ethos. The narrative of a zombie apocalypse carries strong connections to the turbulent social landscape of the United States in the 1960s, when "Night of the Living Dead" provided an indirect commentary on the dangers of conformity, a theme also explored in the novel "The Body Snatchers" (1954) and associated film "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956). Many also feel that zombies allow people to deal with their own anxieties about the end of the world. One scholar concluded that "more than any other monster, zombies are fully and literally apocalyptic ... they signal the end of the world as we have known it". While zombie apocalypse scenarios are secular, they follow a religious pattern based on Christian ideas of an end-times war and messiah.


title: Zombie

text: Simon Pegg, who starred in and co-wrote the 2004 zombie comedy film "Shaun of the Dead", wrote that zombies were the "most potent metaphorical monster". According to Pegg, whereas vampires represent sex, zombies represent death: "Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable." He expressed his dislike for the trend for fast zombies, and argued that they should be slow and inept; just as a healthy diet and exercise can delay death, zombies are easy to avoid, but not forever. He also argued that this was essential for making them "oddly sympathetic... to create tragic anti-heroes... to be pitied, empathised with, even rooted for. The moment they appear angry or petulant, the second they emit furious velociraptor screeches (as opposed to the correct mournful moans of longing), they cease to possess any ambiguity. They are simply mean."


title: Zombie

text: The stories usually follow a single group of survivors, caught up in the sudden rush of the crisis. The narrative generally progresses from the onset of the zombie plague, then initial attempts to seek the aid of authorities, the failure of those authorities, through to the sudden catastrophic collapse of all large-scale organization and the characters' subsequent attempts to survive on their own. Such stories are often squarely focused on the way their characters react to such an extreme catastrophe, and how their personalities are changed by the stress, often acting on more primal motivations (fear, self-preservation) than they would display in normal life.


title: Zombie

text: In the 1990s, zombie fiction emerged as a distinct literary subgenre, with the publication of "Book of the Dead" (1990) and its follow-up "Still Dead: Book of the Dead 2" (1992), both edited by horror authors John Skipp and Craig Spector. Featuring Romero-inspired stories from the likes of Stephen King, the "Book of the Dead" compilations are regarded as influential in the horror genre and perhaps the first true "zombie literature". Horror novelist Stephen King has written about zombies, including his short story "Home Delivery" (1990) and his novel "Cell" (2006), concerning a struggling young artist on a trek from Boston to Maine in hopes of saving his family from a possible worldwide outbreak of zombie-like maniacs.


title: Zombie

text: Max Brooks's novel "World War Z" (2006) became a New York Times bestseller. Brooks had previously authored "The Zombie Survival Guide" (2003), a zombie-themed parody of pop-fiction survival guides. Brooks has said that zombies are so popular because "Other monsters may threaten individual humans, but the living dead threaten the entire human race...Zombies are slate wipers." Seth Grahame-Smith's mashup novel "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" (2009) combines the full text of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" (1813) with a story about a zombie epidemic within the novel's British Regency period setting. In 2009, Katy Hershbereger of St. Martin's Press stated: "In the world of traditional horror, nothing is more popular right now than zombies...The living dead are here to stay."


title: Zombie

text: 2000s and 2010s were marked by a decidedly new type of zombie novel, in which zombies retain their humanity and become friends or even romantic partners for humans; critics largely attribute this trend to the influence of Stephenie Meyer's vampire series "Twilight". One of the most prominent examples is "Generation Dead" by Daniel Waters, featuring undead teenagers struggling for equality with the living and a human protagonist falling in love with their leader. Other novels of this period involving human–zombie romantic relationships include "Bone Song" by John Meaney, "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman, "Midnight Tides" by Steven Erikson, and Amy Plum's "Die for Me" series; much earlier examples, dating back to the 1980s, are "Dragon on a Pedestal" by Piers Anthony and "Conan the Defiant" by Steve Perry.


title: Zombie

text: There has been a growth in the number of zombie mangas in the first decade of the 21st century, and in a list of "10 Great Zombie Manga", Anime News Network's Jason Thompson placed "I Am a Hero" at number 1, considering it "probably the greatest zombie manga ever". In second place was "Living Corpse", and in third was "Biomega", which he called "the greatest science-fiction virus zombie manga ever". During the late 2000s and early 2010s, there were several manga and anime series that humanized zombies by presenting them as protagonists or love interests, such as "" and "Is This a Zombie?" (both debuted in 2009).


title: Zombie

text: Artist Jillian McDonald has made several works of video art involving zombies and exhibited them in her 2006 show "Horror Make-Up", which debuted on 8 September 2006 at Art Moving Projects, a gallery in, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.


title: Zombie

text: Artist Karim Charredib has dedicated his work to the zombie figure. In 2007, he made a video installation at Villa Savoye called "Them !!!", wherein zombies walked in the villa like tourists.


title: Zombie

text: The release of two 1996 horror games Capcom's "Resident Evil" and Sega's "The House of the Dead" sparked an international craze for zombie games. In 2013, George A. Romero said that it was the video games "Resident Evil" and "House of the Dead" "more than anything else" that popularised zombies in early 21st century popular culture. The modern fast-running zombies have origins in these games, with "Resident Evil"s running zombie dogs and especially "House of the Dead"s running human zombies, which later became a staple of modern zombie films.


title: Zombie

text: Zombies went on to become a popular theme for video games, particularly in the survival horror, stealth, first-person shooter and role-playing game genres. Important horror fiction media franchises in this area include "Resident Evil", "The House of the Dead", "Silent Hill", "Dead Rising", "Dead Island", "Left 4 Dead", "Dying Light", "State of Decay", "The Last of Us" and the Zombies game modes from the "Call of Duty" title series. A series of games has also been released based on the widely popular TV show "The Walking Dead", first aired in 2010. In the "Dead Rising" series, the process of infection is described with the metaphor "The wasp kills the host and takes over body motorfuctions." The "World of Warcraft", first released in 2004, is an early example of a video game in which an individual zombie-like creature could be chosen as a player character (a previous game in the same series, "Warcraft III", allowed a player control over an undead army).


title: Zombie

text: PopCap Games' "Plants vs. Zombies", a humorous tower defense game, was an indie hit in 2009, featuring in several best-of lists at the end of that year. The massively multiplayer online role-playing game "Urban Dead", a free grid-based browser game where zombies and survivors fight for control of a ruined city, is one of the most popular games of its type.


title: Zombie

text: "DayZ", a zombie-based survival horror mod for "ARMA 2", was responsible for over 300,000 unit sales of its parent game within two months of its release. Over a year later, the developers of the mod created a standalone version of the same game, which was in early access on Steam, and so far has sold 3 million copies since its release in December 2013.


title: Zombie

text: Romero would later opine that he believes that much of the 21st century obsessions with zombies can be traced more towards video games than films, noting that it was not until the 2009 film "Zombieland" that a zombie film was able to gross more than 100 million dollars.


title: Zombie

text: Outside of video games, zombies frequently appear in trading card games, such as "" or "Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game" (which even has a Zombie-Type for its "monsters"), as well as in role-playing games, such as "Dungeons & Dragons", tabletop games such as "Zombies!!!" and "", and tabletop wargames, such as "Warhammer Fantasy" and "40K". The game "Humans vs. Zombies" is a zombie-themed live-action game played on college campuses.


title: Zombie

text: Writing for "Scientific American", Kyle Hill praised the 2013 game "The Last of Us" for its plausibility, basing its zombification process on a fictional strain of the parasitic "Cordyceps" fungus, a real-world genus whose members control the behavior of their arthropod hosts in "zombielike" ways to reproduce. Despite the plausibility of this mechanism (also explored in the novel "The Girl with All the Gifts" and the film of the same name), to date there have been no documented cases of humans infected by "Cordyceps".


title: Zombie

text: Zombie video games have remained popular in the late 2010s, as seen with the commercial success of the "Resident Evil 2" remake and "Days Gone" in 2019. This enduring popularity may be attributed, in part, to the fact that zombie enemies are not expected to exhibit significant levels of intelligence, making them relatively straightforward to program. However, less pragmatic advantages, such as those related to storytelling and representation, are increasingly important.


title: Zombie

text: On 18 May 2011, the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a graphic novel entitled "Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse", providing tips to survive a zombie invasion as a "fun new way of teaching the importance of emergency preparedness". The CDC used the metaphor of a zombie apocalypse to illustrate the value of laying in water, food, medical supplies, and other necessities in preparation for any and all potential disasters, be they hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, or hordes of zombies.


title: Zombie

text: In 2011, the U.S. Department of Defense drafted CONPLAN 8888, a training exercise detailing a strategy to defend against a zombie attack.


title: Zombie

text: Michael Jackson's music video "Thriller" (1983), in which he dances with a troupe of zombies, has been preserved as a cultural treasure by the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. Many instances of pop culture media have paid tribute to this video, including a gathering of 14,000 university students dressed as zombies in Mexico City, and 1,500 prisoners in orange jumpsuits recreating the zombie dance in a viral video.


title: Zombie

text: The Brooklyn hip hop trio Flatbush Zombies incorporate many tropes from zombie fiction and play on the theme of a zombie apocalypse in their music. They portray themselves as "living dead", describing their use of psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin mushrooms as having caused them to experience ego death and rebirth.


title: Zombie

text: The zombie also appears as a metaphor in protest songs, symbolizing mindless adherence to authority, particularly that of law enforcement and the armed forces. Well-known examples include Fela Kuti's 1976 album "Zombie" and The Cranberries' 1994 single "Zombie".


title: Zombie

text: Organized zombie walks have been staged, either as performance art or as part of protests that parody political extremism or apathy.


title: Zombie

text: A variation of the zombie walk is the zombie run. Here participants do a 5 km run wearing a belt with several flag "lives". If the chasing zombies capture all of the flags, the runner becomes "infected". If he or she reaches the finish line, which may involve wide detours ahead of the zombies, then the participant is a "survivor". In either case, an appropriate participation medal is awarded.


title: Zombie

text: Researchers have used theoretical zombie infections to test epidemiology modeling. One study found that all humans end up turned or dead. This is because the main epidemiological risk of zombies, besides the difficulties of neutralizing them, is that their population just keeps increasing; generations of humans merely "surviving" still have a tendency to feed zombie populations, resulting in gross outnumbering. The researchers explain that their methods of modelling may be applicable to the spread of political views or diseases with dormant infection.


title: Zombie

text: Adam Chodorow of the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at Arizona State University investigated the estate and income tax implications of a zombie apocalypse under United States federal and state tax codes. Neuroscientists Bradley Voytek and Timothy Verstynen have built a side career in extrapolating how ideas in neuroscience would theoretically apply to zombie brains. Their work has been featured in "Forbes", "New York Magazine", and other publications.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The Grand Canyon (, , , Southern Paiute language: Paxa’uipi, ) is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in Arizona, United States. The Grand Canyon is long, up to wide and attains a depth of over a mile ().


title: Grand Canyon

text: The canyon and adjacent rim are contained within Grand Canyon National Park, the Kaibab National Forest, Grand Canyon–Parashant National Monument, the Hualapai Indian Reservation, the Havasupai Indian Reservation and the Navajo Nation. President Theodore Roosevelt was a major proponent of the preservation of the Grand Canyon area and visited it on numerous occasions to hunt and enjoy the scenery.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Nearly two billion years of Earth's geological history have been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut their channels through layer after layer of rock while the Colorado Plateau was uplifted. While some aspects about the history of incision of the canyon are debated by geologists, several recent studies support the hypothesis that the Colorado River established its course through the area about 5 to 6 million years ago. Since that time, the Colorado River has driven the down-cutting of the tributaries and retreat of the cliffs, simultaneously deepening and widening the canyon.


title: Grand Canyon

text: For thousands of years, the area has been continuously inhabited by Native Americans, who built settlements within the canyon and its many caves. The Pueblo people considered the Grand Canyon a holy site, and made pilgrimages to it. The first European known to have viewed the Grand Canyon was García López de Cárdenas from Spain, who arrived in 1540.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The Grand Canyon is a river valley in the Colorado Plateau that exposes uplifted Proterozoic and Paleozoic strata, and is also one of the six distinct physiographic sections of the Colorado Plateau province. Even though it is not the deepest canyon in the world (Kali Gandaki Gorge in Nepal is much deeper), the Grand Canyon is known for its visually overwhelming size and its intricate and colorful landscape. Geologically, it is significant because of the thick sequence of ancient rocks that are well preserved and exposed in the walls of the canyon. These rock layers record much of the early geologic history of the North American continent.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Uplift associated with mountain formation later moved these sediments thousands of feet upward and created the Colorado Plateau. The higher elevation has also resulted in greater precipitation in the Colorado River drainage area, but not enough to change the Grand Canyon area from being semi-arid. The uplift of the Colorado Plateau is uneven, and the Kaibab Plateau that the Grand Canyon bisects is over higher at the North Rim than at the South Rim. Almost all runoff from the North Rim (which also gets more rain and snow) flows toward the Grand Canyon, while much of the runoff on the plateau behind the South Rim flows away from the canyon (following the general tilt). The result is deeper and longer tributary washes and canyons on the north side and shorter and steeper side canyons on the south side.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Temperatures on the North Rim are generally lower than those on the South Rim because of the greater elevation (averaging above sea level). Heavy rains are common on both rims during the summer months. Access to the North Rim via the primary route leading to the canyon (State Route 67) is limited during the winter season due to road closures.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The Grand Canyon is part of the Colorado River basin which has developed over the past 70 million years. Over more than 150 years, scientists have gathered data, proposed new ideas, and debated sometimes contentious theories about the geologic origins of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River. Formation of the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River may involve a complex history in which multiple factors and geologic processes have interacted over time and in different locations.


title: Grand Canyon

text: In the most recent round of “old river” vs. “young river” controversy, researchers have challenged estimates that had placed the age of the canyon at 5–6 million years. The research has aroused considerable controversy because it suggests a substantial departure from prior widely supported scientific consensus.


title: Grand Canyon

text: In a 2008 study, Victor Polyak examined caves near the Grand Canyon and placed their origins about 17 million years ago. The study, which was published in the journal "Science" in 2008, used uranium-lead dating to analyze calcite deposits found on the walls of nine caves throughout the canyon.


title: Grand Canyon

text: In another 2008 study, Rebecca Flowers reported on apatite (U-Th)/He thermochronometry results suggesting that parts of the Grand Canyon had reached a depth near to the modern depth around 20 million years ago.


title: Grand Canyon

text: In a subsequent study published in the journal "Science" in 2012, she suggested that the western part of the Grand Canyon could be as old as 70 million years.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The emerging scientific consensus is that the canyon is made up of multiple segments which formed at different times and eventually connected to become the waterway now traversed by the Colorado River. Of the three central segments, the "Hurricane" was formed 50-70 million years ago, and the "Eastern Grand Canyon" was cut 15-25 million years ago. In contrast, the "Marble Canyon" and "Westernmost Grand Canyon" segments at the ends of the canyon were carved in the last five to six million years.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The major geologic exposures in the Grand Canyon range in age from the 2-billion-year-old Vishnu Schist at the bottom of the Inner Gorge to the 270-million-year-old Kaibab Limestone on the Rim. There is a gap of about a billion years between 1.75 billion and 1.25 billion years ago. This large unconformity indicates a long period for which no deposits are present.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Then, between 1.25 billion and 730 million years ago, intermittent sediments began to form the Grand Canyon Supergroup. Many of the formations were deposited in warm shallow seas, near-shore environments (such as beaches), and swamps as the seashore repeatedly advanced and retreated over the edge of a proto-North America. Major exceptions include the Permian Coconino Sandstone, which contains abundant geological evidence of aeolian sand dune deposition. Several parts of the Supai Group also were deposited in non-marine environments.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The great depth of the Grand Canyon and especially the height of its strata (most of which formed below sea level) can be attributed to () of uplift of the Colorado Plateau, starting about 65 million years ago (during the Laramide orogeny). This uplift has steepened the stream gradient of the Colorado River and its tributaries, which in turn has increased their speed and thus their ability to cut through rock (see the elevation summary of the Colorado River for present conditions).


title: Grand Canyon

text: Weather conditions during the ice ages also increased the amount of water in the Colorado River drainage system. The ancestral Colorado River responded by cutting its channel faster and deeper.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The base level and course of the Colorado River (or its ancestral equivalent) changed 5.3 million years ago when the Gulf of California opened and lowered the river's base level (its lowest point). This increased the rate of erosion and cut nearly all of the Grand Canyon's current depth by 1.2 million years ago. The terraced walls of the canyon were created by differential erosion.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Between 100,000 and 3 million years ago, volcanic activity deposited ash and lava over the area which at times completely obstructed the river. These volcanic rocks are the youngest in the canyon.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Groundwater forms when rain soaks down into the earth and reaches the water table. The composition of the earth in a given area determines its permeability, the ease with which water flows through it. Sand is more permeable than clay. Less permeable rock layers composed of clay can block the passage of water and are known as aquitards. More permeable areas of rock that hold and transport groundwater underground are known as aquifers. An area of water bounded by two aquitards is called a confined aquifer, while water below the surface and above an aquitard is called an unconfined aquifer.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The different geologic levels of the Grand Canyon have created two major aquifers where groundwater collects. The higher C-aquifer is an unconfined aquifer. It collects groundwater that seeps through the Kaibab and Toroweap Formations into the Coconino Sandstone. Below it, the Permian Hermit Formation and Supai Group provide a dense barrier. Groundwater from the C-acquifer can flow laterally, appearing as seeps along the canyon walls at the base of the Coconino Sandstone but can also descend vertically through fault zones to recharge the underlying confined R-aquifer. The R-aquifer, also known as the Red Wall Muav aquifer, is a karst aquifer. It involves an area of substantial fracturing through the Redwall Limestone, Temple Butte Formation and Cambrian Muav Limestone of the Tonto Group. Five individual systems flow through the R-aquifer and compose the regional groundwater-flow system which drains into the Grand Canyon: Kaibab, Uinkaret-Kanab, Marble-Shinumo, Cataract, and Blue Spring.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The flow of groundwater in the Grand Canyon region is influenced in multiple ways by geologic faults and folds. Discharge from the R-aquifer appears as springs and seeps in both the Grand Canyon and tributary canyons. Springs discharge to the Grand Canyon in areas of lower Paleozoic carbonates, and are associated with geologic faults and fractures. Fractures are believed to provide dominant pathways both for vertical circulation in the Paleozoic section, and for lateral collection and transport of water to springs deep in the canyons. The largest springs discharge from the R-aquifer. A smaller number of springs discharge at lower rates from the C-aquifer. Much of the water that could potentially recharge the aquifers is likely released as springs rather than reaching the aquifers.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Studies of the chemical composition of groundwater at sites across the Grand Canyon region indicate that groundwater contains a fraction of modern water (post-1950), and that many springs have a mix of modern water and older groundwater. Estimated mean ages for South Rim groundwater range from 6 years old (San Francisco Peaks) to nearly 20,000 years old (Bar Four well, Blue Spring). Groundwater age in the South Rim groundwater system also correlates to longitude, with age increasing from east to west from Red Canyon to Boucher springs. Surprisingly, the Canyon Mine Observation well is more similar to Redwall-Muav aquifer wells (R-aquifer) than to the Coconino C-aquifer. This suggests the possibility of a hydrologic connection or similar recharge sources for that hydrologic position. Old groundwater from Havasupai well may have a similar source to the Havasu Spring upwelling from the Redwall-Muav aquifer. Sites with younger estimated mean ages tend to be associated with the unconfined Coconino aquifer. They may recharge quickly as a result of snowmelt, run-off and local precipitation. It is likely that the deeper confined R-aquifer relies primarily on snowmelt from the San Francisco Peaks to recharge.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Other research has tried to relate groundwater flow paths to possible levels of risk for contamination and identify vulnerability regions for the underlying aquifers. Almost half of the Kaibab plateau's surface was associated with high to very high vulnerability of the unconfined Coconino aquifer (C-aquifer), while about a fifth of the Kaibab Plateau was estimated to be an area of high vulnerability for the Redwall-Muav aquifer (R-aquifer).


title: Grand Canyon

text: The Ancestral Puebloans were a Native American culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the United States. They were the first people known to live in the Grand Canyon area. The cultural group has often been referred to in archaeology as the Anasazi, although the term is not preferred by the modern Puebloan peoples. The word "Anasazi" is Navajo for "enemy ancestors" or "alien ancestors".


title: Grand Canyon

text: Archaeologists still debate when this distinct culture emerged. The current consensus, based on terminology defined by the Pecos Classification, suggests their emergence was around 1200  during the Basketmaker II Era. Beginning with the earliest explorations and excavations, researchers have believed that the Ancestral Puebloans are ancestors of the modern Pueblo peoples.


title: Grand Canyon

text: In addition to the Ancestral Puebloans, a number of distinct cultures have inhabited the Grand Canyon area. The Cohonina lived to the west of the Grand Canyon, between 500 and 1200 . The Cohonina were ancestors of the Yuman, Havasupai, and Hualapai peoples who inhabit the area today.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The Sinagua were a cultural group occupying an area to the southeast of the Grand Canyon, between the Little Colorado River and the Salt River, between approximately 500 and 1425 . The Sinagua may have been ancestors of several Hopi clans.


title: Grand Canyon

text: By the time of the arrival of Europeans in the 16thcentury, newer cultures had evolved. The Hualapai inhabit a stretch along the pine-clad southern side of the Grand Canyon. The Havasupai have been living in the area near Cataract Canyon since the beginning of the 13thcentury, occupying an area the size of Delaware. The Southern Paiutes live in what is now southern Utah and northern Arizona. The Navajo, or Diné, live in a wide area stretching from the San Francisco Peaks eastwards towards the Four Corners. Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests the Navajo descended from the Athabaskan people near Great Slave Lake, Canada, who migrated after the 11thcentury. In the mythology of some Third Mesa Hopi communities, the Grand Canyon was the location humankind arose out of the Third World from a sipapu.


title: Grand Canyon

text: In September 1540, under orders from the conquistador Francisco Vázquez de Coronado to search for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, Captain García López de Cárdenas, along with Hopi guides and a small group of Spanish soldiers, traveled to the south rim of the Grand Canyon between Desert View and Moran Point. Pablo de Melgrossa, Juan Galeras, and a third soldier descended some one third of the way into the canyon until they were forced to return because of lack of water. In their report, they noted that some of the rocks in the canyon were "bigger than the great tower of Seville, Giralda". It is speculated that their Hopi guides likely knew routes to the canyon floor, but may have been reluctant to lead the Spanish to the river. No Europeans visited the canyon again for more than two hundred years.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Fathers Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante were two Spanish priests who, with a group of Spanish soldiers, explored southern Utah and traveled along the north rim of the canyon in Glen and Marble Canyons in search of a route from Santa Fe to California in 1776. They eventually found a crossing, formerly known as the "Crossing of the Fathers", that today lies under Lake Powell.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Also in 1776, Fray Francisco Garces, a Franciscan missionary, spent a week near Havasupai, unsuccessfully attempting to convert a band of Native Americans to Christianity. He described the canyon as "profound".


title: Grand Canyon

text: James Ohio Pattie, along with a group of American trappers and mountain men, may have been the next European to reach the canyon, in 1826.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Jacob Hamblin, a Mormon missionary, was sent by Brigham Young in the 1850s to locate suitable river crossing sites in the canyon. Building good relations with local Hualapai and white settlers, he reached the Crossing of the Fathers, crossed the location that would become Lees Ferry on a raft in 1858 and Pearce Ferry (later operated by, and named for, Harrison Pearce). He also acted as an advisor to John Wesley Powell, before his second expedition to the Grand Canyon, serving as a diplomat between Powell and the local native tribes to ensure the safety of his party.


title: Grand Canyon

text: In 1857, Edward Fitzgerald Beale was superintendent of an expedition to survey a wagon road along the 35th parallel from Fort Defiance, Arizona to the Colorado River. He led a small party of men in search of water on the Coconino Plateau near the canyon's south rim. On September 19, near present-day National Canyon, they came upon what May Humphreys Stacey described in his journal as "a wonderful canyon; four thousand feet deep. Everybody in the party admitted that he never before saw anything to match or equal this astonishing natural curiosity."


title: Grand Canyon

text: Also in 1857, the U.S. War Department asked Lieutenant Joseph Ives to lead an expedition to assess the feasibility of an up-river navigation from the Gulf of California. On December 31, 1857, Ives embarked from the mouth of the Colorado in the stern wheeler steamboat "Explorer". His party reached the lower end of Black Canyon on March 8, 1858, then continued on by rowboat past the mouth of the Virgin River after the "Explorer" struck a rock. Ives led his party east into the canyon – they may have been the first Europeans to travel the Diamond Creek drainage. In his "Report Upon the Colorado River of the West" to the Senate in 1861 Ives states that "The marvellous story of Cardinas, that had formed for so long a time the only record concerning this rather mythical locality, was rather magnified than detracted from by the accounts of one or two trappers, who professed to have seen the cañon".


title: Grand Canyon

text: According to the "San Francisco Herald", in a series of articles run in 1853, Captain Joseph R. Walker in January 1851 with his nephew James T. Walker and six men, traveled up the Colorado River to a point where it joined the Virgin River and continued east into Arizona, traveling along the Grand Canyon and making short exploratory side trips along the way. Walker is reported to have said he wanted to visit the "Moqui" (Hopi) Indians. who he had met briefly before and found exceptionally interesting.


title: Grand Canyon

text: In 1869, Major John Wesley Powell set out to explore the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon in the first expedition down the canyon. Powell ordered a shipwright to build four reinforced Whitewall rowboats from Chicago and had them shipped east on the newly completed Continental railroad. He hired nine men, including his brother Walter, and collected provisions for ten months. They set out from Green River, Wyoming, on May 24. On June 7, they lost one of their boats, 1/3 of their food, and other badly-needed supplies: as a result the team eventually had to subsist on starvation rations. Passing through (or portaging around) a series of dangerous rapids, the group passed down the Green River, reaching its confluence with the Colorado River, near present-day Moab, Utah, on July 17. Continuing on down the Colorado River, the party encountered more rapids and falls. On August 28, 1869, faced with what some felt to be impassable rapids, three men left the expedition on foot in an attempt to reach a settlement away. Ironically, the remaining members went safely through the rapids on August 29, 1869, while Seneca Howland, Oramel Howland, and William H. Dunn were murdered. The area through which the three men traveled was marked by tensions between farming and hunting Shivwits and incoming Mormon settlers. Which group was responsible for killing the three men has been hotly debated. Powell himself visited the area the following year, and was told (through a Mormon interpreter) that the Shivwits had mistakenly killed the men, believing them to be prospectors who had murdered an Indian woman. He choose to smoke a peace pipe with them.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Powell went on to become the first Director of the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution (1879–1902) and the second Director of the US Geological Survey (1881–1894). He was the first to use the term "Grand Canyon", in 1871; previously it had been called the "Big Canyon".


title: Grand Canyon

text: In 1889, Frank M. Brown wanted to build a railroad along the Colorado River to carry coal. He, his chief engineer Robert Brewster Stanton, and 14 others started to explore the Grand Canyon in poorly designed cedar wood boats, with no life preservers. Brown drowned in an accident near Marble Canyon: Stanton made new boats and proceeded to explore the Colorado all of the way to the Gulf of California.


title: Grand Canyon

text: U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt visited the Grand Canyon in 1903. An avid outdoorsman and staunch conservationist, Roosevelt established the Grand Canyon Game Preserve on November 28, 1906. Livestock grazing was reduced, but predators such as mountain lions, eagles, and wolves were eradicated. Roosevelt along with other members of his conservation group, the Boone and Crockett Club helped form the National Parks Association, which in turn lobbied for the Antiquities Act of 1906 which gave Roosevelt the power to create national monuments. Once the act was passed, Roosevelt immediately added adjacent national forest lands and redesignated the preserve a U.S. National Monument on January 11, 1908. Opponents such as land and mining claim holders blocked efforts to reclassify the monument as a U.S. National Park for 11 years. Grand Canyon National Park was finally established as the 17th U.S. National Park by an Act of Congress signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on February 26, 1919.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The federal government administrators who manage park resources face many challenges. These include issues related to the recent reintroduction into the wild of the highly endangered California condor, air tour overflight noise levels, water rights and management disputes, and forest fire management.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The canyon's ecosystem was permanently changed after the construction of the Glen Canyon Dam in 1963. Average flood levels dropped from 85,000 to 8,000 cubic ft/sec. In the absence of natural flooding, sandbars and beaches eroded and invasive species began to displace native species. Federal officials started releasing floods in the Grand Canyon in hopes of restoring its ecosystem beginning with 1996, 2004, and 2008.


title: Grand Canyon

text: In 2018, the Department of Interior started experimenting with “adaptive management” of the Glen Canyon Dam, using a High-Flow Experiment (HFE) water release to shift volumes of sand and monitoring effects such as the dispersal of invasive tamarisk seeds.


title: Grand Canyon

text: However, as of 2022, extreme drought has caused water levels in Lake Powell to drop so much that a planned release of water has been delayed, to ensure that the Glen Canyon Dam can continue to generate hydropower.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Between 2003 and 2011, 2,215 mining claims had been requested that are adjacent to the canyon, including claims for uranium mines. Critics of uranium mining are concerned that uranium will leach into the aquifers feeding the Colorado River and contaminate the water supply for up to 18 million people. In 2009, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar published a Notice of Intent to suspend approvals for new uranium mining in the area. In 2012, Salazar established a 20-year moratorium (known as the "Northern Arizona Withdrawal") withdrawing from the permitting process for uranium and hardrock mining, stating "People from all over the country and around the world come to visit the Grand Canyon. Numerous American Indian tribes regard this magnificent icon as a sacred place and millions of people in the Colorado River Basin depend on the river for drinking water, irrigation, industrial and environmental use." However, Salazar's 20-year moratorium on new mines still allows mines with previous authorization to operate.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Multiple challenges have been brought into court both against the moratorium and against the operation of uranium mines in the area. The federal government's 2012 moratorium was upheld by the U.S. District Court for Arizona in 2014, but appealed in November 2014 as "National Mining Association v. Jewell" (No. 14-17350). The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals again upheld the moratorium in 2017, stating that the Secretary of the Interior held valid withdrawal authority.


title: Grand Canyon

text: "Havasupai Tribe v. Provencio" was also argued at multiple court levels based on multiple grounds. The Havasupai people and the Grand Canyon Trust sought to block the reopening of the Pinyon Plain Mine (formerly Canyon Uranium Mine). Activity at the mine had ceased in 1992, ten years prior to the moratorium on new development in 2012. Appellants challenged the U.S. Forest Service's consultation process for approving reopening of the mine. As of February 22, 2022, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the arguments in No. 20-16401, concluding that the Forest Service had not acted arbitrarily in making its decision.


title: Grand Canyon

text: A study examining samples of groundwater from 180 spring sites and 26 wells in the Grand Canyon region has assessed the presence of uranium in groundwater from September 1, 1981 to October 7, 2020. The goal of the study was to establish a baseline assessment of groundwater conditions in the Grand Canyon region. At 95% of sites, maximum observed uranium concentrations were below the EPAs Maximum Contaminant Level for drinking water, 30 µg/L. At 86% of sites, uranium concentrations were below the Canadian level for protection of freshwater aquatic life, 15 µg/L.


title: Grand Canyon

text: There are several historic buildings located along the South Rim with most in the vicinity of Grand Canyon Village.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Weather in the Grand Canyon varies according to elevation. The forested rims are high enough to receive winter snowfall, but along the Colorado River in the Inner Gorge, temperatures are similar to those found in Tucson and other low elevation desert locations in Arizona. Conditions in the Grand Canyon region are generally dry, but substantial precipitation occurs twice annually, during seasonal pattern shifts in winter (when Pacific storms usually deliver widespread, moderate rain and high-elevation snow to the region from the west) and in late summer (due to the North American Monsoon, which delivers waves of moisture from the southeast, causing dramatic, localized thunderstorms fueled by the heat of the day). Average annual precipitation on the South Rim is less than , with of snow; the higher North Rim usually receives of moisture, with a typical snowfall of ; and Phantom Ranch, far below the canyon's rims along the Colorado River at gets just of rain, and snow is a rarity.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Temperatures vary wildly throughout the year, with summer highs within the Inner Gorge commonly exceeding and winter minimum temperatures sometimes falling below along the canyon's rims. Visitors are often surprised by these potentially extreme conditions, and this, along with the high altitude of the canyon's rims, can lead to unpleasant side effects such as dehydration, sunburn, and hypothermia.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Weather conditions can greatly affect hiking and canyon exploration, and visitors should obtain accurate forecasts because of hazards posed by exposure to extreme temperatures, winter storms and late summer monsoons. While the park service posts weather information at gates and visitor centers, this is a rough approximation only, and should not be relied upon for trip planning. For accurate weather in the canyon, hikers should consult the National Weather Service's NOAA weather radio or the official National Weather Service website.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The National Weather Service has had a cooperative station on the South Rim since 1903. The record high temperature on the South Rim was on June 26, 1974, and the record low temperature was on January 1, 1919, February 1, 1985, and December 23, 1990.


title: Grand Canyon

text: However, air quality in the area can be affected by air pollution from coal-fired power plants, mining, oil and gas, vehicles, and urban and industrial pollution from nearby states, California and Mexico. Events such as forest fires and dust storms in the Southwest can have a considerable impact.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Winter cold fronts tend to carry clean, crisp air from the northwest, a less populated area. However they can also carry pollution from nearby mines and power plants. The average visibility during the winter is 160 miles, with the potential to reach 210 miles under ideal conditions. In the summer, prevailing winds from the southwest carry pollution from major urban and industrial centers, and visibility on average is only 100 miles. Within the canyon itself, smog can be trapped.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Air quality and visibility in the canyon are affected mainly by sulfates, soils, and organics. The sulfates largely result from urban emissions in southern California, borne on the prevailing westerly winds throughout much of the year, and emissions from Arizona's copper smelter region, borne on southerly or southeasterly winds during the monsoon. Airborne soils originate with windy conditions and road dust. Organic particles result from vehicle emissions, long-range transport from urban areas, and forest fires, as well as from VOCs emitted by vegetation in the surrounding forests. Nitrates, carried in from urban areas, stationary sources, and vehicle emissions; as well as black carbon from forest fires and vehicle emissions, also contribute to a lesser extent.


title: Grand Canyon

text: A number of actions have been taken to preserve and further improve air quality and visibility at the canyon.


title: Grand Canyon

text: In 1990, amendments to the Clean Air Act established the Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission (GCVTC) to advise the US EPA on strategies for protecting visual air quality on the Colorado Plateau. The GCVTC released its final report in 1996 and initiated the Western Regional Air Partnership (WRAP), a partnership of state, tribal and federal agencies to help coordinate the implementation of the Commission's recommendations.


title: Grand Canyon

text: In 1999, the Regional Haze Rule established a goal of restoring visibility in national parks and wilderness areas (Class 1 areas), such as the Grand Canyon, to natural background levels by 2064. Subsequent revisions to the rule provide specific requirements for making reasonable progress toward that goal.


title: Grand Canyon

text: In the early 1990s, studies indicated that emissions of SO, a sulfate precursor, from the Navajo Generating Station affected visibility in the canyon, mainly in the winter.


title: Grand Canyon

text: As a result, scrubbers were added to the plant's three units in 1997 through 1999 to reduce SO2 emissions by 90% on an annual average. Before and after observations showed a wintertime decrease of 33% for particulate sulfur (Sp), improving visibility. The plant also installed low-NO SOFA burners in 2009–2011, reducing emissions of NO, a nitrate precursor, by 40%


title: Grand Canyon

text: Emissions from the Mohave Generating Station to the west were similarly found to affect visibility in the canyon. The plant was required to have installed SO scrubbers, but was instead shut down in 2005, completely eliminating its emissions.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Prescribed fires are typically conducted in the spring and fall in the forests adjacent to the canyon to reduce the potential for severe forest fires and resulting smoke conditions. Although prescribed fires also affect air quality, the controlled conditions allow the use of management techniques to minimize their impact.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Due to the increase of greenhouse gases, temperatures have steadily risen making recent years the warmest of the century. Temperatures have increased in Arizona by 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895. From 1916–2014, naturalized streamflow in the Upper Colorado River Basin decreased by 16.5%, in spite of a slight increase of +1.4% in annual precipitation over the same period.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Increases in temperature correlate to increased evaporation, loss of reflective snow, and decreases in snowpack, reducing available water in the Colorado River by an estimated 9.3% per degree Celsius of warming.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Over the last 30 years, the South Rim of the Grand Canyon has averaged 13.4 inches of rainfall per year, while the North Rim has averaged 24 inches. The first dual distribution water system in the United States was built on the South Rim, treating and reclaiming wastewater for nonpotable reuse as early as 1926. Early on, water for human use was brought in by tankers, and pumped up from a spring deeper in the canyon. In the 1960s, the Transcanyon Pipeline was built to carry water from the North Rim down into the canyon and back up to the South Rim.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Every day 500,000 gallons of water are pumped from underground springs on the North Rim through the pipeline to supply the more heavily developed South Rim with water.


title: Grand Canyon

text: As water consumption continues to soar due to increasing visitation in the park, both the sustainability of the water supply and the condition of the pipeline are in question. As of 2019, plans to replace the aging 16-mile aluminum pipeline were proposed. Another proposal, from the Bureau of Reclamation, recommended that the park drill a well into the Redwall-Muav aquifer to meet the increasing water consumption. However, the aquifer's recharge rate stands to decline over time due to decreases in precipitation and snowpack. Some effects of over pumping aquifers include land subsidence, reduction in rivers and lakes, disrupted riparian systems, and poor water quality.


title: Grand Canyon

text: In the National Parks Service's "Climate Action Plan," goals were set to reduce greenhouse gases 30 percent below 2008 levels by 2020 and plan and implement measures that best allow the park to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Strategies to accomplish these goals included: "reduce [greenhouse gases] emissions resulting from activities within and by the park, developing and implementing a plan to adapt to current and future impacts of climate change, increase climate change education and outreach, and monitor progress and identify areas for improvement".


title: Grand Canyon

text: There are approximately 1,737 known species of vascular plants, 167 species of fungi, 64 species of moss, and 195 species of lichen found in Grand Canyon National Park. This variety is largely due to the elevation change from the Colorado River up to the highest point on the North Rim. Grand Canyon boasts a dozen endemic plants (known only within the Park's boundaries) while only ten percent of the Park's flora is exotic. Sixty-three plants found here have been given special status by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The Mojave Desert influences the western sections of the canyon, Sonoran Desert vegetation covers the eastern sections, and ponderosa and pinyon pine forests grow on both rims.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Natural seeps and springs percolating out of the canyon walls are home to 11% of all the plant species found in the Grand Canyon. The canyon itself can act as a connection between the east and the west by providing corridors of appropriate habitat along its length. The canyon can also be a genetic barrier to some species, like the tassel-eared squirrel.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The aspect, or direction a slope faces, also plays a major role in adding diversity to the Grand Canyon. North-facing slopes receive about one-third the normal amount of sunlight, so plants growing there are similar to plants found at higher elevations, or in more northern latitudes. The south-facing slopes receive the full amount of sunlight and are covered in vegetation typical of the Sonoran Desert.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The Park contains several major ecosystems. Its great biological diversity can be attributed to the presence of five of the seven life zones and three of the four desert types in North America. The five life zones represented are the Lower Sonoran, Upper Sonoran, Transition, Canadian, and Hudsonian. This is equivalent to traveling from Mexico to Canada. Differences in elevation and the resulting variations in climate are the major factors that form the various life zones and communities in and around the canyon. Grand Canyon National Park contains 129 vegetation communities, and the composition and distribution of plant species are influenced by climate, geomorphology and geology.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The Lower Sonoran life zone spans from the Colorado River up to . Along the Colorado River and its perennial tributaries, a riparian community exists. Coyote willow, arrowweed, seep-willow, western honey mesquite, catclaw acacia, and exotic tamarisk (saltcedar) are the predominant species. Hanging gardens, seeps and springs often contain rare plants such as the white-flowering western redbud, stream orchid, and "Flaveria mcdougallii". Endangered fish in the river include the humpback chub and the razorback sucker.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The three most common amphibians in these riparian communities are the canyon tree frog, red-spotted toad, and Woodhouse's Rocky Mountain toad. Leopard frogs are very rare in the Colorado River corridor; they have undergone major declines and have not been seen in the Canyon in several years. There are 33 crustacean species found in the Colorado River and its tributaries within Grand Canyon National Park. Of these 33, 16 are considered true zooplankton organisms.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Only 48 bird species regularly nest along the river, while others use the river as a migration corridor or as an overwintering habitat. The bald eagle is one species that uses the river corridor as a winter habitat.


title: Grand Canyon

text: River otters may have disappeared from the park in the late 20th century, and muskrats are extremely rare. Beavers cut willows, cottonwoods, and shrubs for food, and can significantly affect the riparian vegetation. Other rodents, such as antelope squirrels and pocket mice, are mostly omnivorous, using many different vegetation types. Grand Canyon bats typically roost in desert uplands but forage on the abundance of insects along the river and its tributaries. In addition to bats, coyotes, ringtails, and spotted skunks are the most numerous riparian predators and prey on invertebrates, rodents, and reptiles.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Raccoons, weasels, bobcats, gray foxes, and mountain lions are also present but are much rarer. Ungulate species such as mule deer and desert bighorn sheep frequent the river corridor. Since the removal of 500 feral burros in the early 1980s, bighorn sheep numbers have rebounded. Mule deer are generally not permanent residents along the river but travel down from the rim when food and water resources there become scarce.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The insect species commonly found in the river corridor and tributaries are midges, caddisflies, mayflies, stoneflies, black flies, mites, beetles, butterflies, moths, and fire ants. Numerous species of spiders and several species of scorpions, including the bark scorpion and the giant desert hairy scorpion, inhabit the riparian zone.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Eleven aquatic and 26 terrestrial species of mollusks have been identified in and around Grand Canyon National Park. Of the aquatic species, two are bivalves (clams) and nine are gastropods (snails). Twenty-six species of terrestrial gastropods have been identified, primarily land snails and slugs.


title: Grand Canyon

text: There are approximately 41 reptile species in Grand Canyon National Park. Ten are considered common along the river corridor and include lizards and snakes. Lizard density tends to be highest along the stretch of land between the water's edge and the beginning of the upland desert community. The two largest lizards in the canyon are gila monsters and chuckwallas. Many snake species, which are not directly dependent on surface water, may be found both within the inner gorge and the Colorado River corridor. Six rattlesnake species have been recorded in the park.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Above the river corridor a desert scrub community, composed of North American desert flora, thrives. Typical warm desert species such as creosote bush, white bursage, brittlebush, catclaw acacia, ocotillo, mariola, western honey mesquite, four-winged saltbush, big sagebrush, blackbrush, and rubber rabbitbrush grow in this community. The mammalian fauna in the woodland scrub community consists of 50 species, mostly rodents and bats. Three of the five Park woodrat species live in the desert scrub community.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Except for the western banded gecko, which seems to be distributed only near water along the Colorado River, all of the reptiles found near the river also appear in the uplands, but in lower densities. The desert gopher tortoise, a threatened species, inhabits the desert scrublands in the western end of the park.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Some of the common insects and animals found at elevations above are orange paper wasps, honey bees, black flies, tarantula hawks, stink bugs, beetles, black ants, and monarch and swallowtail butterflies. Solifugids, wood spiders, garden spiders, black widow spiders, and tarantulas can be found in the desert scrub and higher elevations.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The Upper Sonoran Life Zone includes most of the inner canyon and South Rim at elevations from . This zone is generally dominated by blackbrush, sagebrush, and pinyon-juniper woodlands. Elevations of are in the Mojave Desert Scrub community of the Upper Sonoran. This community is dominated by the four-winged saltbush and creosote bush; other important plants include Utah agave, narrowleaf mesquite, ratany, catclaw acacia, and various cacti species.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Approximately 30 bird species breed primarily in the desert uplands and cliffs of the inner canyon. Virtually all bird species present breed in other suitable habitats throughout the Sonoran and Mohave deserts. The abundance of bats, swifts, and riparian birds provides ample food for peregrines, and suitable eyrie sites are plentiful along the steep canyon walls. Also, several critically endangered California condors have made the eastern part of the Park their home, having been re-introduced to the Colorado Plateau on the Arizona Strip earlier.


title: Grand Canyon

text: The conifer forests provide habitat for 52 animal species. Porcupines, shrews, red squirrels, tassel-eared Kaibab and Abert's squirrels, Indian peacocks, black bear, mule deer, and elk are found at the park's higher elevations on the Kaibab Plateau.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Above the desert scrub and up to is a pinyon pine forest and one seed juniper woodland. Within this woodland one can find big sagebrush, snakeweed, Mormon tea, Utah agave, banana and narrowleaf Yucca, winterfat, Indian ricegrass, dropseed, and needlegrass. There are a variety of snakes and lizards here, but one species of reptile, the mountain short-horned lizard, is a particularly abundant inhabitant of the piñon-juniper and ponderosa pine forests.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Ponderosa pine forests grow at elevations between , on both North and South rims in the Transition life zone. The South Rim includes species such as gray fox, mule deer, bighorn sheep, rock squirrels, pinyon pine, and Utah juniper. Additional species such as Gambel oak, New Mexico locust, mountain mahogany, elderberry, creeping mahonia, and fescue have been identified in these forests. The Utah tiger salamander and the Great Basin spadefoot toad are two amphibians that are common in the rim forests. Of the approximately 90 bird species that breed in the coniferous forests, 51 are summer residents and at least 15 of these are known to be neotropical migrants.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Elevations of are in the Canadian Life Zone, which includes the North Rim and the Kaibab Plateau. Spruce-fir forests characterized by Engelmann spruce, blue spruce, Douglas fir, white fir, aspen, and mountain ash, along with several species of perennial grasses, groundsels, yarrow, cinquefoil, lupines, sedges, and asters, grow in this sub-alpine climate. Mountain lions, Kaibab squirrels, and northern goshawks are found here.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Montane meadows and subalpine grassland communities of the Hudsonian life zone are rare and located only on the North Rim. Both are typified by many grass species. Some of these grasses include blue and black grama, big galleta, Indian ricegrass, and three-awns. The wettest areas support sedges and forbs.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Grand Canyon National Park is one of the world's premier natural attractions, attracting about five million visitors per year. Overall, 83% were from the United States: California (12%), Arizona (9%), Texas (5%), Florida (3%) and New York (4%) represented the top domestic visitors. Seventeen percent of visitors were from outside the United States; the most prominently represented nations were the United Kingdom (3%), Canada (4%), Japan (2%), Germany (2%) and the Netherlands (1%).


title: Grand Canyon

text: The South Rim is open all year round weather permitting. The North Rim is generally open mid-May to mid-October.


title: Grand Canyon

text: Aside from casual sightseeing from the South Rim (averaging above sea level), rafting, hiking, running, and helicopter tours are popular. The Grand Canyon Ultra Marathon is a race over 24 hours. The floor of the valley is accessible by foot, muleback, or by boat or raft from upriver. Hiking down to the river and back up to the rim in one day is discouraged by park officials because of the distance, steep and rocky trails, change in elevation, and danger of heat exhaustion from the much higher temperatures at the bottom. Rescues are required annually of unsuccessful rim-to-river-to-rim travelers. Nevertheless, hundreds of fit and experienced hikers complete the trip every year.