Muscat - The Sultanate of Oman has gone through many climatic conditions. Learning this part of history means understanding the earth and its movements and plates shifting. This history is narrated at the Oman Across Ages Museum located in Manah, Al Dakhiliyah Governorate.
At that time, Oman was covered by ice and could have been near the equator.
The story goes back to 700 million years ago. The official explanation by the Museum says: "The moving ice sheets brought together rock fragments from different regions of the earth. Although Oman was located near the equator 700 million years ago, it was covered by ice, suggesting that the earth's surface was entirely or nearly entirely frozen."
The diamictite found in Mirbat is from 700 million years ago. But dating back further to 800 is the granite found in Mirbat.
"And this explains the forming of the Arabian plate," states the Museum.
Granite is among Oman's oldest rocks. The Museum explains that it was created by the slow crystallization of magma beneath the earth's surface. They consist mainly of quartz, feldspar and mica. According to the experts, this combination usually gives granite a red, pink, or grey color in which dark mineral grains are visible. Around 700 million years ago, the earth saw the appearance of the first organisms.
Bacteria were the first form of life on earth. Emerging in shallow waters around 700 million years ago, they formed mats and domes - stromatolites.
Bacteria produced oxygen and thus created the conditions needed for the rise of multi-celled organisms. The sample of the bacterial mat is also sampled at the Museum.
The proof of the glazier actions is a boulder found in Al Huqf dated 32 million years ago. This boulder features grooves and lines caused by the grinding action of glaciers as they carved their way across the landscape millions of years ago when Oman was close to the South Pole!
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