Layers of breathtaking colour streak the rolling hills of this vast desert, making the landscape appear as though it has been tie-dyed. The natural phenomenon, nicknamed the “Painted Desert”, was formed when the area was once a river floodplain. Each colour corresponds to a different underground geological feature – rocks which have seemingly dyed the layers of earth above. Formed from volcanic activity, the hills at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in East Central Oregon, USA, are almost bursting with colour. Pictured: The colourful hills at the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument in East Central Oregon, USA. (Photo by Mark Brodkin/Solent News/SIPA Press)

“Mountain Goats, Colorado”. A herd of mountain goats huddle together on top of Mount Evans, Colorado during a lightning storm. This photo was selected out of more than 5,000 entries to go on display in “Wilderness Forever: 50 Years of Protecting America’s Wild Places”, a new photo exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, which will run through summer 2015. (Photo by Verdon Tomajko/Smithsonian Wilderness Forever Photo Contest)

This Monday, September 15, 2014 photo shows glazed bricks displayed at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad. The Islamic State militants seek to purge society of all influences that don't conform with their strict, puritanical version of Islam. That means destroying not only relics seen as pagan but also Muslim sites they see as contradicting their ideology, particularly Sunni Muslim shrines they see as idolatrous as well as mosques used by Shiites, a branch of Islam they consider heretical. (Photo by Hadi Mizban/AP Photo)

Police, bystanders and soldiers aid a fallen soldier at the War Memorial as police respond to an apparent terrorist attack on October 22, 2014 in Ottawa, Canada. A gunman is believed to have shot a soldier as he was standing guard at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. It is believed police then chased the man into the main parliament building at Parliament Hill, where more shots were fired. (Photo by Wayne Cuddington/Postmedia/Barcroft Media/ABACAPress)

A Guarani Indian woman jokes with her son in the village of Pyau at Jaragua district, in Sao Paulo April 27, 2015. The National Indian Foundation (FUNAI) has recognised 521 hectares of this area as indigenous territory, making it the smallest indigenous reserve in Brazil. Members of the Guarani community have now established a new village outside the demarcation and are being threatened with an eviction through a court order. (Photo by Nacho Doce/Reuters)

A Perseid meteor streaks across the sky over the community of Cold Creek on August 12, 2015 in the Spring Mountains National Recreation Area, Nevada. The annual display, known as the Perseid shower because the meteors appear to radiate from the constellation Perseus in the northeastern sky, is a result of Earth's orbit passing through debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

An injured national guard officer is carried away by comrades outside the parliament building in Kiev, Ukraine, August 31, 2015. Nearly 90 people were wounded and several of them were in a serious condition on Monday after several explosive devices were thrown from crowds in front of the Ukrainian parliament building in Kiev, the interior minister said in a Tweet. (Photo by Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)