Fossils reveal UAE’s lush grasslands, giant rivers from millions of years ago

ABU DHABI, UAE — From the birth of the universe to the Earth’s future, the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi takes visitors on a 13.8-billion-year journey through time.

Since the new landmark’s opening in November, iconic displays such as Stan, a 67-million-year-old T. rex skeleton, and the 7-billion-year-old Murchison meteorite have been instant crowd favorites. Yet some of the museum’s most compelling exhibits are closer to home, the Abu Dhabi fossils.

Not only do they represent creatures that lived in the emirate millions of years ago, they also reveal a landscape far different from the country’s golden sand dunes and rocky mountains, according to Mark Jonathan Beech, acting geoscience section head at the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi.

Few would guess that Abu Dhabi’s western region once had “giant rivers, savannahs, grasslands, and trees.” But fossils unearthed in Al Dhafra tell exactly that story, Beech said.

He said such discoveries show that Arabia and Abu Dhabi were not always desert land.

In fact, around 100 million years ago, the UAE was under the sea, the expert said. This is supported by clear geological evidence, including marine remains still being found in mountain regions, including Sharjah. The northern emirate is also home to the Faya Paleolandscape, which earned UNESCO World Heritage status in July.

The Hajar mountains formed mainly between 95 million and 70 million years ago, with later uplift shaping what we see today. Renewed uplift and erosion shaped today’s mountains such as Jebel Hafit, which formed only between 25 million and 15 million years ago.

These changes led to dramatic shifts in the fossil record. By about 7 million years ago, Al Dhafra featured vast river systems that supported elephants, giraffes, and antelopes, alongside freshwater species such as crocodiles, turtles, and catfish, Beech said.

“All these fossils found in the Al Dhafra region of Abu Dhabi are pieces of evidence that help build a picture of a past” — a green, verdant environment with rivers that supported some rich biodiversity.

“It was like being on safari in East Africa,” he added, highlighting the remarkable biodiversity that once thrived in the region.

This shift in the natural world, as striking as it may seem, also stands as “direct evidence of climate change”, the expert said. “It shows that when the climate changes, animals become extinct.”

Fossils, he added, are “very instructive”. The climate insights that they carry from previous eras can help guide the planet toward the future.

The museum traces climate changes across billions of years, Beech said.

Data from the past 150 to 200 years reveal the trend of global warming, illustrated through a climate spiral and an Arabia Climate journey, highlighting numerous climatic oscillations through time.

Reflecting on the wider goal of the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, Beech said, “Our mission really is to help educate people and to show that to be better ambassadors of the future, we need to care for our planet and to care for nature.”

ALETIHAD NEWS CENTRE