Labels:text | font | screenshot | white | black and white OCR: Sand seas consist of two distinct areas: flat, duneless regions and the dunes themselves which may be anything from 3 feet to 1,200 feet high. Winds blow dunes into a variety of shapes; the best-known forms are horseshoe-shaped barchans, linear dunes and star dunes. Sand dunes start life as small piles of sand, which may be formed by wind action, by the resistance of an obstacle like a bush or boulder, or by the presence of depressions in the ground which help to distribute the blowing sand asymmetrically.