Morocco has an abundance of fossils, perhaps more than any other country, which today makes it a popular tourist attraction, underlines the site specializing in tourism and travel "Travel Daily News".
“One of the most popular travel destinations in the world, mainly for its rich culture, its beautiful architecture and its ancient history… Morocco is also home to many fossil deposits, some of which date from the Precambrian period”, underlines the media, noting that the country was inhabited since the Paleolithic era, more than 90,000 years ago.
“Some researchers have even suggested that humans lived in Morocco long before this period. They cite as evidence the Homo sapiens fossils found in the Jebel Irhoud region, dating back to 315,000 years ago,” he reports, indicating that visitors could “find trilobite fossils there.”
The Saharan Ocean
At one time, an ocean 50 meters deep covered up to 3,000 km2 of what is now the Sahara Desert. Some of the largest sea snakes, catfish, sharks and marine animals lived in this ocean, as well as many extinct aquatic species, recalls Travel Daily News, noting that the Sahara today is full of fossils in marine sediments.
“In addition to species like sea snakes, sharks, and catfish, creatures called orthocera, trilobites, and ammonites could be found in this ocean. An orthoceras was an ancient mollusk that had a squid-like body, housed inside a thick conical shell. Trilobites were a type of invertebrate with an armored shell, which scavenged and burrowed for food on the ocean floor,” the site writes, adding that “Ammonites, like Orthocera, were a type of mollusk, with outer shells rolled up. They have been compared in appearance to the modern nautilus.
Among other marine animals that thrived in the ocean that covered the Sahara, the same source cites “crocodyliforms, amiidae and sea snakes, some of which were over 12 meters long.
Source : https://article19.ma