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Ancient seabed uncovered in Sudan

A Sudanese geological team has discovered an ancient marine sedimentary formation more than 500 million years old.
The image shows the oldest sedimentary formation in Sudan.

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.”

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