Yucatan Peninsula

Credit: NASA

The Yucatan Peninsula is a flat expanse exposed to the stormy weather of the Carribean and the Gulf of Mexico. Home of the Mayans, it has numerous archeological sites such as Chichen Itza and Uxmal preserving their culture and its use of Venus in its calendar. Long before them, 65 million years ago, an asteroid impact left the buried Chixulub Crater, and created the disruption of Earth's climate that led to the global extinction of the dinosaurs.