Karakul sheep the early 20th century. Karakul sheep are a multi-purpose breed, kept for milking, meat, pelts, and wool. As a fat-tailed breed, they have a distinctive meat. Many adult Karakul are double-coated; in this case, spinners separate the coarse guard hair from the undercoat. Karakul is a relatively coarse fiber used for outer garments, carpets and for felting. Very young or even fetal Karakul lambs are prized for pelts. Newborn karakul sheep pelts are called karakul (also spelled "caracul"), "swakara "(coined from "South West Africa Karakul"), "astrakhan" (Russian), "Persian lamb", "agnello di Persia", (Italian), "krimmer" (Russian) and "garaköli bagana" (Turkmen). Sometimes
Karakul (Tajikistan) impact (2.5 Ma), which has already been suggested as a contributor to the cooling and ice cap formation in the Northern Hemisphere during the late Pliocene. The Karakul impact structure was first identified around 1987 through studies of imagery taken from space. The lake was formerly known as Lake Victoria, named after Queen Victoria by the British cartographers/military geographers. It was marked as such by most maps of the area until the 1920s when a Kyrgyz name: Karakul, or the Black Lake, replaced the British name by the new Soviet cartographers. The lake/crater lies at an elevation of above mean