Erfoud · Anti-Atlas
Saharan Fossil Hunt
Unearthing 400-million-year-old creatures from a vanished ocean.
Difficulty
Moderate
Duration
5 nights
Region
Erfoud
The Story
Before the Sahara was sand, it was sea. We join Moroccan paleontologists in the black hammada outside Erfoud, brushing dust off trilobites the size of dinner plates and ammonites curled like sleeping rams. Every strike of the chisel opens a door no living eye has crossed in 400 million years.
History
The Anti-Atlas hammada is one of the richest Paleozoic fossil beds on Earth. Berber families have quarried these stones for four generations.
