Shark Park

Last year a museum film, in Al Hasa, explained to us how the eastern portion of Saudi Arabia was once under the ocean. Seeing it now makes that difficult to imagine. Then we heard of a place near Khurais, 3 hours inland from the ocean, where you can find fossilized sea life and sharks teeth.

Our caravan of families and friends, in 4 wheel drive vehicles, set out and met up with this camel caravan along the way.

These limestone outcropping are not super visible from the road but after 1.5 hrs of driving our GPS coordinates said we were there. We put all our cars in four wheel drive and set off in the sand. I have to admit I was a bit worried about getting stuck but their was only one time we went a bit squirmy in the sand.

Our caravan drove right down into these bowls to begin our search.

I don't know the geological history of this area. But I'm supposing that when the waters receded these outcropping trapped a lot of sea life and as it died the wind shifted sand around preserving the remains.

As the winds continue to shift sand it reveals these treasures from the past. Anything black was once ocean life. There were pockets where these fossils were everywhere.
In other spots you had to sift a little to find something interesting.
What we really wanted were shark teeth. Which proved to be much more difficult to find. Generally they were not black and varied from tiny to quite large.....however finding large ones was rare. It wasn't until one of our friends really helped me understand what I was looking for that I found success. This was well after the boys were ready to go and the sun was heating things up. Once I caught on I couldn't stop Chris had to literally pull me away. I could have remained all day playing in the sand.
With Graham walking this adventure went really well. We brought him some sand shovels and buckets and he would just follow me or Chris around digging and sorting. He also began to clue in on the black things vs. other object and put only blacks in my bucket.....so helpful. Zach and Ethan just filled their buckets with things they found interesting. They were pretty over it by the time we left which was a good because I really didn't want to bring home this 5 gallon bucket full of just plain old rocks.
These were some of the treasures I found.
I don't know why I enjoyed digging in the dusty sand so much but it did reminded me that I had seriously considered geology and marine biology as majors at one point.
Last but not least.....SHARK TEETH.....some fossilized and others that looked as if they had just washed up on the shore.