The Putangirua Pinnacles are a badlands formation of earth pillars, or hoodoos, in the Aorangi Ranges of the Wellington region of New Zealand, ranked among the best examples of badlands erosion in the country. The pinnacles began forming seven to nine million years ago from alluvial fans laid down when the Aorangi ranges were an island, later exposed to wind and water erosion after the ice ages wore away the softer surrounding conglomerate while capped areas resisted; most of the visible pinnacle shapes emerged within roughly the last thousand years, hastened by regional deforestation, and the formation still erodes at about a centimeter a year.
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Putangirua Pinnacles (Wikipedia)
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The Pūtangirua Pinnacles (also known colloquially simply as The Pinnacles) are a geological formation and one of New Zealand's best examples of badlands erosion.
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