Day 4 - Thursday 5th April 2018

We set off after the people from the desert camp had returned and had their breakfast. We were in five 4 by 4 vehicles as we were going to places the buses could not reach. Just before we got to Taouz we left the paved road and headed for the Dinosaur Miners! These hardy men tunnel into fossiliferous bands of the mid-Cretaceous to find fossil vertebrates.

The beds are known as the Kem Kem and Prof Martill, one of whose specialities are these beds, has written extensively about them and their fossils HERE.

From the Dinosaur mines we drove to an old vanadianite mine where mineral hunters gather specimens of vanadianite. A nearby stop was to look at an odd sort of crinoid which seemed to have calcite flotation bladders.

And then it was back to our hotel where we extracted what we needed for the night - basically toothbrush and underpants, and, in my case, camera - and headed for the camels. Most of us ordered some wine or beer to be taken to the camp. Less than an hour on the camels brought us to the camp which was rather luxurious. It was as good as the hotel but rather different!

You can read about what we did in the captions of the photos below.

A glimpse of the Palaeozoic in the valley with the Kem Kem above.

One of the tunnels made by the dinosaur (fossil) hunters

The group looks to see what's for sale.

Another tunnel. I do not know how the miners decide which horizon is worth exploring. It is speculated that intermittent floods in the Cretaceous, gathered fossils from a wide area and concentrated them in scattered spots.

The group scatters to see what they can find.

The vanadium mine area. The area is a honeycomb with shafts and declivities everywhere. Mohamed's father worked here. It was a much larger, commercial, operation then, exporting vanadium for steel making.

One of the adits made by the mineral hunters. It is specimens which are sold nowadays.

My vanadianite specimen. The crystals are hexagonal and tabular. The view is about 36mm across. I bought this from the miner who had dug it out.

Looking for crinoids with flotation aids. Various likely bits were found but not anything spectacular. The best reference with illustrations I could find was THIS. I hope there are better ones but this is not my speciality! There is THIS ARTICLE which looks interesting but you need special access to read it.

We returned to the hotel, packed a small overnight bag and went to find our camel train. This turned out to be my camel. I don’t know if he had a name.

Mohamed (in the red) helps us get on the camels.

I was on the lead camel. We took less than an hour to get to the desert camp. I suspect we took the long way round.

A panoramic view of the desert camp.

The desert camp turned out to be rather luxurious. This is our bedroom. We had a sitting area, toilet shower etc. Our dinner was provided under the stars and the staff provided Moroccan music and songs. A rather special experience.