As the seasons change or as a day passes, the light and shadows on the dunes change, too. The differences in light turn the dunes different shades of brown, pink, cream, and gray. Patterns in the sand can change before your eyes. Plants include blowout grass, Indian rice grass, scurfpea, and in late summer the bright yellow prairie sunflower. These are particularly hardy plants that have adapted to life in the shifting sands.
Animals are even more scarce.
Although Kangaroo rats, giant sand treader camel crickets, and a variety of insects found nowhere else on Earth do.