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| In spite of the fact that the U.A.E. has
been in existence for just under 30 years, the country has a
fossil record stretching back hundreds of millions of years.
The emirate of Abu Dhabi is particularly rich in fossils, although
isolated geological formations in Sharjah and Dubai have also
yielded important fossil remains as well, particularly of a
marine nature. For many years scholars from the British Museum
of Natural History in London have worked in the western desert
area of Abu Dhabi where a bountiful harvest of fossils have
been uncovered. The types of fossil equids, elephants, hippopotami,
crocodiles and other species recovered near Jabal Baynunah bear
witness to a climate and environment very different from that
of the present day. Watering holes, surrounded by savannah-like
grassland, existed here which probably looked more like East
Africa than eastern Arabia. Abu Dhabi is a palaeontologist’s
dream, for not only have large numbers of fossils been discovered
in the so-called Baynunah Formation, but entirely new species
and animals previously unattested in the Arabian peninsula have
been found there. The study of this important fossil record
is providing important clues about the climate and environment
of the Arabian shelf (broadly the eastern half of the peninsula)
which are changing the way scientists look at the earliest phases
in the history of the earth and its inhabitants. |
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