[SunkenCiv]

Farouk Al Baz originated the idea that the Great Sphinx at Giza began as a yardang.

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[GovernmentIsTheProblem]

For your readers -

A yardang is a rock ridge feature caused by wind and water erosion. The word itself is of Turkish origin, meaning ‘steep bank’. Some are found in dried-up riverbeds. Yardangs may also be found in deserts and may form very unusual shapes and some resemble various objects or even people.

Yardangs are elongate features typically three or more times longer than they are wide, and when viewed from above, resemble the hull of a boat. Facing the wind is a steep, blunt face that gradually gets lower and narrower toward the lee end1. They come in a large range of sizes, and are divided into three different categories: mega-yardangs, meso-yardangs, and micro-yardangs. Mega-yardangs can be several kilometers long and hundreds of meters high, meso-yardangs are generally a few meters high and 10 to 15 meters long, and micro-yardangs are only a few centimeters high.

[RightWhale]

I have always thought the Sphinx was a yarddang. Probably everybody who thought about it at all thought so. Who is this Farouk al Baz? BTW, the Sphinx originally had a lion head and you can see where they chopped it away to make the ludicrously undersized human head, which was after the Great Pyramid had already reduced the normal rainfall to almost zero.

[Fred Nerks]

http://www.saudicaves.com/cavedive/index.html

As you drive south from Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, towards Al Kharj, you will see the desert dotted with circular areas of lush green grass. They provide fodder for some of the biggest dairy farms in the world. Their cultivation here, in the middle of the desert, is made possible by fossil water. It lies in natural reservoirs deep under the ground. They were created during a climatic period of more rain when there were green forests here. On some places near Al Kharj this water comes close to the surface and big sink holes, or "Dahls" in Arabic, have opened in the ground.

[Fred Nerks]

remote sensing? looks as if he missed this:

The Al-Safi dairy in Saudi Arabia is the largest commercial dairy in the world.