What's that rock? Part 7

In 1912, a reporter joined two palaeontologists and an adventurer to explore an unknown plateau in South America. Almost inaccessible, the four made their way to the top through the only, and the most perilous, route. Jutting high above the Amazon jungle below, the plateau stretched for miles in all directions. Cut off from all life below, the four explorers soon discovered that this plateau had it’s own unique ecosystem. Plants only seen in the fossil record were right there as bright as the flowers in your garden. And there was more. Giant reptilian beasts. Some walking on four legs, others, more dangerous, walking on two. All were larger than a bus. It was a prehistoric lost world.

This is of course the fictional classic, The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. And sadly the plateau, and the dinosaurs, don’t exist. For me, I learnt several things reading this book when I was younger. Firstly, I loved the idea of lost worlds on hidden, inaccessible plateaus, and my young mind imagining that somewhere those scaly terrible lizards were still roaming in a long forgotten, unexplored land.

Secondly, the story focuses on the reporter. He is not a strong, brave, explorer, but goes on this adventure to impress a lady, because she thinks he’s not a tough guy. Throughout his experiences, he realizes that love is not what someone wants you to be, but love is being with someone who loves you for you: gentle, strong, nerdy, kind, you don’t have to be someone else to please someone - you should always just be you. This always stuck with me, and the most wonderful thing was finding that with someone, even though for me it was a little later in life. You can be a little quirky, you can be a little nerdy, you can just be yourself and when you have found that person, they love all those quirky qualities that make you you.

The novel got me thinking pretty deeply about things as a small, slightly round, quite blond haired little kid. Dinosaurs. True love. And plateaus.

What were plateaus? How did they form? Could there really be different ecosystems up there?

When I first came to AlUla two years ago, I was mesmerized by the landscape as soon as I stepped off the plane. The warm air hit me and the bright blue sky lit up the landscape like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Perhaps there is no other place on earth where you step out and think just how magnificent our planet is.

Driving through the long road into AlUla, the landscape changes dramatically: if you were driving through the United States, you would have to pass through several National Parks to see such diverse landscapes. I pass blue-grey sands blown against sharp pointed mountains, crisper than any painting. Then the reds of the sandstone mesas begin to tower above; at first isolated, large outcrops in-between expanses of sand, and then closely packed mesas surround you. But I can see it in the distance, before I even come into AlUla: a dark plateau on-top of soft, honey-coloured sandstones. It’s as flat as flat can be, as flat as if someone had iced a cake. It stretched for miles, always on the left as I drive north, with the unique sandstone formations on the right. This was Harrat Uwayrid Biosphere Reserve.

Looking up from below it looked just like a flat black rock table, and from above through wonderful Google Earth, it looked like this table stretched for hundreds of kilometers. An expanse high above the ground.

I’d heard stories about the plateau. The name harrat means lava flow, so there must have been some immense volcanic activity in the past. I’d heard there were volcanoes up there somewhere. And rich ecosytems vastly different from the sandy plains below.

It wasn’t long before I visited my first plateau. ?

Not for adventure. Or for love. But for stories.

But then again, perhaps isn't there a little bit of adventure and love in all stories?

Close to the edge of the plateau, it’s flat. Dark, hard basalt boulders cover the surface. But this was not just one lava flow. There were dozens. A hike up to the top takes me through sandstones, and then meters and meters of the dark basalt: I’m climbing over dozens of lava flows. Moving in towards the center, and there are volcanoes. Some ravaged by time, but still recognizable. Others, beautiful as if they had erupted yesterday. Up here, in the center of the plateau, are rich environments, home to dozens of species of plants and animals. It’s no wonder this expanse is the largest of AlUla’s five nature reserves.

The story of this plateau is as magnificent as the landscape it creates.

The familiar sandstones we see across AlUla have only recently taken their shape. 500 million years ago, rivers, deltas and shallow seas dropped enormous amounts of sediment, building layer upon layer of sand. Buried deep underground, the sediment was crushed and heated, transforming it into rock. It lay underground for hundreds of millions of years, drifting silently with the gentle flow of plate tectonics. The rocks drifted, hidden from the surface and everything above, until around 30 million years ago. Something happened. A crack appeared in the earth’s crust, and the rifting of the Red Sea began. As it slowly opened, it pushed Africa westwards, and the Arabian Peninsula eastwards. This force crumpled the Arabian Plate, forcing those ancient sandstones to be thrust upwards, seeing sunlight for the first time in half a billion years.

Here was the birth of AlUla’s first plateau: an enormous sandstone plateau was thrust up, high above the surrounding area. The plateau I stand on is not sandstone, but basalt: this is a plateau upon a plateau.

As the Red Sea opened, it not only pushed up those long lost rocks, it also caused shifts in the hot liquid rock deep below. Around ten million years ago, bubbles of magma rose, like colossal hot air balloons. Veins of hot molten rock forced their way through the sandstones, and when they reached the surface, a spectacular array of volcanoes were born. Like the volcanoes in Hawaii or Iceland, these would have spewed out lava like fountains, and it must have been a beautiful, dramatic landscape to see.

The lava flows spread across the sandstone below, and the sheer volume of basalt we see today tells us what an enormous amount of lava erupted. Several eruptions over almost ten million years covered over 4680km2.

As the volcanoes erupted, and bright, orange lava fountains dotted what would look like some sort of primeval landscape, the sandstone plateau was slowly being destroyed. Wind and rain have broken down this giant sandstone plateau to the landscape we see today. And that lava, well, it protected the sandstone beneath. Basalt is a very hard igneous rock, and takes a lot longer than sandstone to be broken down. The result: a plateau. The lava flows covered the sandstone, and while the sandstone that was not covered by lava has slowly been shaped by the natural elements, the sandstone under the basalt remains untouched. ?

Plateaus are also known as tablelands, and they are large relatively flat terrains raised high above the ground below. There are many plateaus around the world, like the Tibetan Plateau, which formed from the Indo-Australian Plate crashing into the Eurasian Plate. The Colorado Plateau, which includes the iconic Grand Canyon, was formed by uplift and erosion. These areas do serve as unique ecosystems, as animals and plants become isolated and adapt to the high altitudes and different climate.

In AlUla, we have two plateaus. The well-known Harrat Uwayrid Biosphere Reserve, which can be seen anywhere in central and northern AlUla. And in the south, Harrat Al Zabin in AlZabin Nature Reserve. Both are volcanic plateaus, and both are protected areas because of the unique environments they have created.

The link between geodiversity and biodiversity is never far away.

Whilst, sadly, there are no giant dinosaurs roaming around, these plateaus do offer a sense of adventure. Driving, or hiking, to the top of Harrat Uwayrid, you are instantly in a completly different landscape. It appears to go on for miles, a vast flat expanse to the horizon. But travel a little inwards, and there are ancient volcanoes, creating yet another unexpected landscape.

And with adventure, there is love. There are look out points on Harrat Uwayrid. Standing there, looking back out to the sandstones below, you are just lost in the ancient stories of time with the person by your side: ancient stories side by side with an ancient love. The spectacular landscape, the silence, the powerful movements of our planet that formed this very landscape over tens of millions of years, just mesmerizingly beautiful in every sense.

These types of moments are greater than any fictional novel, even if that novel does include dinosaurs. For you stand there, arms around each other.

Two souls alone.

Two souls together.

Lost in the moment.

Lost in the splendor of our planet.