Scientists have now pinpointed the age of a star dune in a remote area of Morocco and uncovered details about its formation and how it moves across the desert.
The study focused upon a star dune in eastern Morocco called Lala Lallia, meaning “highest sacred point” in the local Berber language, situated within the Sahara Desert in a small sand sea called Erg Chebbi about 3 miles (5 km) from the town of Merzouga, close to the border with Algeria.
Lala Lallia rises about 330 feet (100 meters) above the surrounding dunes and is approximately 2,300 feet (700 meters) wide, containing about 5-1/2 million metric tons of sand.
They discovered that the very base of the dune was 13,000 years old but were surprised that the upper part of the structure had only been formed in the last 1,000 years or so. “It turned out to be surprisingly young,” said Prof Geoff Duller of the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth University, UK.
The base continued to build up until about 9,000 years ago. “Then the surface stabilized. We think it was a bit wetter than today. We can see traces of old plant roots, suggesting the dune was stabilized by vegetation. It seems to have stayed like that for about 8,000 years. Then the climate started to change again and this star dune started to form.”
Star dune formed because the wind blows in two opposing directions
Duller said the dune was formed because the wind blows in two opposing directions – from the south-west and the north-east – leading to the sand building up. A steady third wind that blows from the east is shifting the dune slowly to the west at a rate of about 50cm a year.
“That’s important when you’re thinking about building roads, pipelines or any sort of infrastructure,” said Duller. “These things actually do move.”
Luminescence dating techniques developed at Aberystwyth were used to discover the last time minerals in the sand were exposed to sunlight to determine their age.
Duller said: “We’re not looking at when the sand was formed – that’s millions of years ago – but when it was deposited. The grains of quartz have a property like a mini rechargeable battery.
“It can store energy that it gets from naturally occurring radioactivity. When we bring it back to the laboratory, we can get it to release that energy. It comes out in the form of light. We can measure that and the brightness tells us the last time the sand grain saw daylight.”
One catch is that they have to collect the grains of sand without exposing them to light. They did this by cutting pits into the dunes and hammering in an old piece of drainpipe to gather the samples.
“That part isn’t terribly hi-tech,” said Duller. The work in the lab – which is much more hi-tech and sensitive – has to be carried out in the same sort of conditions as a photographic darkroom.
The dune discoveries are published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Related: 90,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Found on a Beach in Morocco
See all the latest news from Greece and the world at Greekreporter.com. Contact our newsroom to report an update or send your story, photos and videos. Follow GR on Google News and subscribe here to our daily email!
