CAIRO — A team of Sudanese geologists from the Regional Geology Department of the Sudanese General Department of Geological Surveys at the General Organization for Geological Research recently unearthed a marine sedimentary formation in Sudan dating to the Cambrian period. They have named it the Al Barda and Abu Talih formation.

The General Organization for Geological Research explained in a statement published on its Facebook page on Sept. 28 that “the age of the sedimentary formation has been determined thanks to a fossil belonging to the phylum of sponges called Archaeocyatha, which are an extinct reef-building species that live in marine environments. These species existed in the early Cambrian period but eventually became extinct, meaning that they date back to over 500 million years ago.”

The statement said that “scientific research is needed to define the marine area’s formation environment so as to determine the minerals expected to be found in marine depositional environments, most of which are ores used in the industry of drilling fluids. The research also has economic importance exemplified in the localization of the industry of bentonite, barite, calcium carbonate and silica ores in Sudan.”

According to the statement, the geological team has excavated 12 trenches and several samples were taken for external analysis, which revealed that they contained barite, vermiculite, bentonite (both sodium and calcium) and great depths of white sand.