Al Wathba, Abu Dhabi (CNN) — Drive an hour or so southeast out of the city of Abu Dhabi toward the emirate’s empty deserts and you’ll hit a landscape full of unexpected man-made creations.
The region of Al Wathba is home to a beautiful oasis-like wetland reserve created, so the story goes, by an overspill from a water treatment facility. Now it’s a lush terrain that attracts flocks of migratory flamingos.
Farther along roads lined with carefully planted trees, there’s the surreal site of an artificial mountain rising up on the horizon, its flanks buttressed by gigantic concrete walls.
And stray off the main roads onto the back lanes, you’ll encounter wide and dusty camel highways, where cooler evening temperatures see vast fleets of the humped beasts being exercised in readiness for the winter racing season.
But one of Al Wathba’s more unusual and elegant attractions is not the work of humans. Instead it’s been crafted over tens of thousands of years by elemental forces that, though they were at play millennia ago, offer insight into how the current climate crisis might reshape our world.
Abu Dhabi’s fossil dunes rise up out of the surrounding desert like frozen waves in a violent ocean made of solid sand, their sides rippling with shapes defined by raging winds.
‘Complex story’
Though these proud geological relics have survived for centuries out in the middle of nowhere, they were opened as a free tourist attraction in Abu Dhabi in 2022 as part of efforts by the emirate’s Environment Agency to preserve them within a protected area.
Whereas Instagrammers and other visitors once needed all-terrain vehicles to ride up to the fossil dunes in search of a dramatic selfie backdrop, they now get a choice of two large parking lots that bookend a trail which meanders past some of the more spectacular landmarks.
Along the way are informative signposts that give some bare-bones information on the science behind the dunes’ creation — essentially, moisture in the ground caused calcium carbonate in the sand to harden, then powerful winds scraped them into unusual shapes over time.
But there’s far more to it than that, says Thomas Steuber, a professor…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CNN.com – RSS Channel – App Travel Section…