Geology                                                                                                        This page is revised on 9 June 1999

A geologist once said, that Oman is one big open Museum of Geology. I have no knowledge of geology. But as soon as I arrived here and started travelling around it was obvious to me that Oman is something extraordinary and that there is plenty of geology to see.

One of the good things is that most of the geologic phenomena are exposed at the surface:

The first thing I saw was the foldings of the mountains. They are very distinct and are seen often.

Foldings all over.

Or a nice layer cake mountain:

or just some nice stripes in a mountain:

or multicoloured mountainsides:

or everything is organised nicely in proper layers:

Conglomerate are often seen in various types:

covering the wadi bottom and being hard as concrete:

Most of the geological activities in Oman have been explained to me as the result of two main incidents:
1) The Arabic peninsula is old sea bottom (through many hundreds of millions of years), and
2) The Indian Ocean tectonic plate was pushed in underneath the Arabic plate, which stopped its position as sea bottom.
After this happened, a relatively small piece of the Indian Ocean plate was pushed up through the Arabic plate whereby the, for human beings, big massif of the Hajar Mountains was created. This massif is completely different from anything else in Oman. It is very hard granite-like rock, where as the rest of Oman mainly consists of lime and sand stone.

On the picture below are the border between the two plates clearly visible. In fact it is possible in just one single step to walk from one tectonic plate to another. Fascinating experience.

It is in this Al Hajar massif that big canyons and some caves are to be seen:

(There is a person in the exact centre of this picture).

or maybe one could use a small stone bridge (maybe for pixies, who knows?):

The sand stone areas are not less interesting. Many formations created with a lot of fantasy:

In the centre of the desert - the most remote place I have ever visited - are the so-called Rudists to be found. They are, as far as it is possible to look so far back in the past, fossilised pre-oysters or similar. Approximately 100 million years old. They have been growing vertical in a form of a sausage, up to ½ or ¾ of a metre. On the top of the plant (or the animal) it had its mouth.
They have not been found in many places of the world. But at this place in the centre of Oman they are found in huge heaps.

Another funny phenomena is this pencil rock. It almost looks like leftovers from a sawmill.

Plate-ice in Umm As Samim (one of the world's biggest salt planes):

I was also told that I have seen a plug. Which should be the place to find diamonds. It is, so they say, a huge burp from the magma in the inner of the earth. It nearly reached the surface but was stopped for some reason. At this spot and at that time the pressure was giant huge and the temperature accordingly high. That is what is needed to create diamonds.
I have not tried to dig.