[NASA] Digging Back in Time in the UAE

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3. Digging Back in Time in the UAE

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• Topics
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• About
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Jabal al Fāyah rises from the Rub’ al Khali desert in an image captured by the

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(Operational Land Imager) on

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on October 23, 2025.

NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

About an hour’s drive east of

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gleaming towers and

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, a quieter, more natural landscape takes shape. At the far northern edge of the

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, a saffron-colored sand sea laps against the

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. A series of pale ridges rises finlike from the desert plain, with the largest—Jabal al Fāyah—standing 412 meters (1,352 feet) above sea level.  

The

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satellite captured this image of the ridges cutting across the Emirate of Sharjah in the northern part of the United Arab Emirates on October 23, 2025. To geologists, the

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ridges are a reminder of the region’s watery past, signs that this land lay underwater tens of millions of years ago when the

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were deposited.

Jabal al Fāyah functions as a barrier, trapping windblown sand in dune fields to its west. The

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of iron-bearing minerals in the sand grains gives the dune fields their orange hue. To the east, the branching channels of overlapping

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extending from the Al-Hajar Mountains carry gravels and eroded sediments from basalts and other

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. 

The dark rocks to the east—part of the

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—are known to geologists for being among the world’s largest, best-preserved, and most accessible exposures of ancient oceanic

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, the rigid outer layer of Earth that includes both the

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and

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. Oceanic lithosphere like this is normally

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and recycled back into the mantle when tectonic plates collide. But in this area, a large section from beneath the

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was

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and thrust onto the Arabian plate in a process called obduction.  

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Dubai lies to the west of the limestone ridges, and the Al-Hajar Mountains lie to the east, in an image acquired by the

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(Operational Land Imager) on

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on October 23, 2025.

NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

The Jabal al Fāyah ridges themselves are made up of marine limestone that was deposited on top of the ophiolite over tens of millions of years spanning the

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through the early to

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. Limestone typically forms along continental margins in warm, shallow oceans, often in lagoons and coral reefs, out of the

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found in the shells and skeletons of marine life. In many parts of the ridges, coral fragments and marine invertebrate fossils are visible embedded in the rock. A feature called

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sits a few kilometers north of Jabal al Fāyah and adjacent to the limestone ridge Jabal Mulayḩah. It contains an abundance of snail, clam, and sea urchin remains. 

For archaeologists, the ridges are at the center of a much more recent tale of human adaptation and survival that has played out in just the past few hundred thousand years. The ridges and parts of the surrounding landscape—inscribed as a

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in 2025—are dotted with dozens of archaeological sites that trace human occupation on the Arabian Peninsula back to between 210,000 and 120,000 years ago, to the

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. That was a ******* when waves of anatomically modern humans

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migrated out of Africa and shared the planet with other groups such as Neanderthals.   

Many of the sites contain stone flakes, blades, scrapers, hand axes, and other stone tools. The archaeological treasure trove offers early evidence of modern humans surviving in a harsh desert environment and

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about the routes modern ***** sapiens may have taken on their journey out of Africa.  

Geological evidence indicates that lakes periodically formed on the east side of the ridge, providing critical food and water resources that would have supported early inhabitants in this unforgiving climate. Rocky overhangs along the ridge would have provided shelter from the heat and wind. Some of the sites show evidence of intermittent occupation beginning as early as

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, making this one of the

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of human habitation on the Arabian Peninsula.   

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the 

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. Story by Adam Voiland.

Downloads

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October 23, 2025

JPEG (3.89 MB)

References & Resources

• Armitage, S., et al. (2011)
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  . Science, 331(6016), 453-456.
• Bretzke, K., et al. (2025)
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  . Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 17(60). 
• Bretzke, K., et al. (2022)
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  . Scientific Reports, 12, 1600. 
• Bretzke, K., et al. (2013)
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  . Quaternary International, 300, 83-93. 
• Condé Nast Traveller (2025, July 15)
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  . Accessed June 4, 2026. 
• Kamran, K., via Substack (2025, February 18)
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  . Accessed June 4, 2026. 
• Phys.org (2022, February 1)
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  . Accessed June 4, 2026. 
• Smithsonian (2025)
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  Accessed June 4, 2026. 
• UNESCO (2025)
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  . Accessed June 4, 2026.  
• Visit Sharjah (2025)
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  . Accessed June 4, 2026. 

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