- The purpose of the visit?
- Ethnographic expedition.
- Ok, Looking for oil?
- Not really...
Hello everyone.
Today is Friday
A prayer day for locals
and non-prayer one for non-locals :)
February
+9 degrees Celsius outside
and +26 is forecasted
Bright sunny day
This is the best time
to go and search for fossils
And this is what we gonna do today!
The secrets of the desert - 1: Amateur paleontology
I am driving on Makkah Road
the downtown of Riyadh
after about 500 m
we turn right to King Fahd Road
The second central street of Riyadh
that crosses the city from north to south
Turning to King Fahd Rd...
And now go just straight
Famous Kingdom Tower is right ahead
aka "opener"
The tallest building of Riyadh
On the right
Nice building
Something happened here...
Accident with a police car...
Taxi...
The pillars on the right
are the overground  subway being constructed
Several lines
One more car accident...
Something special this morning...
Quite serious...
On the opposite lane...
A smashed car ...
A truck overturned...
BTW, fire trucks are yellow in Riyadh
Of course, a traffic jam is on the right now...
The paved road is over
and we are exiting to offroad
Quite rolled offroad
Looks like traffic is fairly intensive here
and that some parts of the road are paved
We are approaching to the destination...
or, more accurately, one of the today's destinations...
Let's see what is here...
So, we arrived to the site where, according to rumors,
fossils occur, which are a couple hundred millions years old
At least, this was told by people who reported the findings here...
Now we spend some time here
in a search of these fossils
I hope to find too
This is a group of our cars
seven
Mostly expats, Frenchmen, Englishmen, etc.
And this is the site proper
The people are searching already...
Ok, let's start searching
in a hope to find something....
Not many chances though...
It is quite obvious that someone visited this site before us...
well before...
Artifacts...
are right here.
Looks like my search succeeded
quite fast, by the way
Indeed, there are a lot of fossils here
These are fossilized shells of shellfish
The structure is well visible
A closer look...
One more finding
Fossilized snail
The shell is very clear
Awesome!
One more! Kinda snail.
Fossilized shell.
Just at every step!
Looks like we found a really fossils-reach site
One of my companions, a German from Gelsenkirchen
Schalke
He is a diver
and knows a lot about coral reefs
He found a lot of snail shells here
and says that a coral reef was likely here
That is why so much fossils occur around
Indeed, we have found a lot of fossils  here
quite diverse
shells of shellfish, snails, etc.
Will try to find even more...
Not enough time to collect all fossils,
because it is time to go to another site
According to the information from our today's leader,
there is a burial of the bronze age about 30 min of walking distance
So let's go to see!
Heading to the burial of the bronze age
Climbing up...
Over that ridge...
A little bit more efforts...
The tomb is seen at the skyline
Heading there!
This is a view...
a scenic view from the tomb...
This is the tomb proper
Bronze Age, about 10,000 years ago
The tomb inside
A kind of a stone fence around
And desert around....
A closer look of the tomb
Once again: Bronze Age, about 10,000 years ago
Going down now...
Our cars are over there, at the downhill
And a scenic view...
The last point of today's trip
To collect fossils...
My working horse!
Again, a fossilized snail
Looks like snails felt not bad here about 200 million years ago
Because they occur literally at every step!
However, I will not collect snails anymore
Let's look for something else
Looks like a print
A fossil
Another snail just 30 cm from the previous one
Countless
Very shy shellfish:)
An entrance to the home of a local desert dweller :)
Looks like a fossilized coral
A characteristic mosaic pattern
I do not have like this in my collection. So take it!
Several shells in one place!
A grazing herd over there...
A shepherd is on the right
on Toyota
A camel is not needed anymore
The progress!
The most intriguing is what they eat there
The shepherd is here!
Came to check who we are
On the back way, we found a glade of flowers in the mid of the desert
Irises
Spring!
