Tour Include:

• Local guide and driver

• Hotel accommodation

• Dinner and breakfast in the hotels

• Picnic lunch

• Bottled water on day excursions

• Transportation in Landcruiser

• Airport transfers

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Day 1: Arrival at Marrakech Airport

Upon arriving in Marrakech and starting our 11 Day Morocco Fossil Hunting tour, we will transfer from the airport to the hotel, where you will have a time for relaxing and free time to explore the city.

 

Day 2 - Crossing the Atlas Mountains, and Kasbah Ait-Ben-Haddou World Heritage Site.

Today is mostly a travel day.  We then continue on our way up to the Col du Tichka which is 2260m above sea level. Along the way the road passes over rocks of many different ages – Cambrian, Ordovician, Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous – which have all been folded as the Atlas thrusted up.  Our road then swings due south passing through Jurassic, Cretaceous and Eocene layers before reaching the city of Ouarzazate where we spend the night. Our accommodation here is a three-star hotel, with en-suite bathrooms.

 

Day 3 - Precambrian Stromatolites, giant Ordovician Trilobites in the Draa Valley and the Fezouata Shale Lagerstätte. 

This morning we start our day by visiting a site which contains 600 million year old (Edicarian) stromatolites. We then continue to a site in the Draa Valley that is famous for its Giant Cold Water Trilobites; these were alive when Morocco was near to the South Pole. These Trilobites are Ordovician (Tremadocian) in age and are in the lower part of the famous Fezouta Shale. The Trilobites that were mined, and continue to be mined, from this site can be up to 20-30 cm long! Later in the trip we will have the opportunity to see some of them in the Erfoud Museum. We spend the night in the nearby town of Zagora.

 

Day 4 – Saredrar Orthoceras quarry and Ordovician Trilobites in the Alnif area.

 Our first stop today is the Saredrar Orthoceras quarry which is not far from Tazzarine. Rocks and fossils from this quarry are fashioned into all sorts of beautiful objects such as basins, table tops, bowls and plates, and can be found for sale in fossil shops around the world. Orthoceras are Cephalopods with straight shells, that are thought to be the ancestors of Ammonites, from the Ordovician until the Triassic. The Orthoceras at Saredar are Silurian (Ludlow) in age. This is followed by a mid-Ordovician site near Battou where trilobites and echinoderms are mined from nodules. . We then visit the well-known Jebel Tiskaouine mountain from which huge numbers of ‘Calymene’ Trilobites have been mined and can be found in fossil shops all over the world.  The night is spent in a hotel just outside Alnif.

 

Dicranurus Day 5 – The Maider Basin, the ‘Lost World’ of Trilobites.

Our first stop of the day is known as Bou Dib and is on the north escarpment of the famous trilobite mountain Jbel Isoumour. The rocks here are calcareous marls and limestones and are Devonian (late Emsian – early Eifelian) in age. We still spend our time examining the Psychopyge horizon in the Tazoulait Formation that has been quarried for many kilometres, as well as the area below it where loose fossils can be seen lying on the surface. We then continue to the village of Fezzou where we stop for a rest at a café and have an opportunity to meet local people. Here we can spend time with fossil miners who are working in the afternoon we will head to the hotel in Alnif

 

Day 6 – A second day in Alnif and relocating to the Erg Chebbi Dunes.

Today after breakfast we will visit where they extract the Calymene (Colpocoryphe) Trilobite Fossils They first appeared in the fossil record in the Early Cambrian (521 million years ago) and went extinct during the Permian mass extinction (250 million years ago), after that we will return to Alnif to see some of the craftsmen how do they extract fossils from the middle of the stone from beginning to end it’s really hard work but it’s awesome! and we will also visit some local shops and you can buy from them, after we have lunch  then head to Merzouga and the famous sand dunes of Erg Chebbi. Here we really feel that we are in the Sahara Desert - because we are! The next two nights are spent in hotel in Merzouga.

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Day 7 -  Kem Kem Dinosaur Site and Today we drive south through the sand dunes.

We then head to the famous Kem Kem site which is rich in fish, crocodiles and dinosaurs. The rocks are Cretaceous (Cenomanian) in age and were formed by rivers flowing into lakes. This site has also yielded many teeth and bones of the dinosaurs Spinosaurus and Carcharodonosaurus. We spend the whole morning at this site before moving on to a site on the other side of Taouz were Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian layers can all be seen very close to each other because they are folded. In rocks that lie on the Silurian and Devonian boundary, we can see the remains of Pelagic Crinoids and their floats called Labolith. In this area local miners have dug several pits to collect the fossils, and we can observe wonderful specimens in the museum in Erfoud.. The night is spent at the same hotel in Merzouga - an excellent place to observe the stars, and it is possible to take a sunset camel ride into the Erg Chebbi dunes.

 

Day 8 - Kess Kess and Erfoud.

Today we visit Hamar Laghdad also know as the Kes Kes which are Devonian cold seep mud volcano mounds on which rich coral reefs once grew. We then visit a site where crinoids are mined in bell pits, before reaching Erfoud quarry where Orthoceras slabs with Goniatites are Quarried. The rocks here are mid-Devonian in age. After a picnic we head to the town of Erfoud where we visit the museum, getting to see specimens collected at many of the sites we visited, and the Orthoceras factory. The Orthoceras factory is a marvel and we can see how the quarried Orthoceras slabs are made into many beautiful objects We also eat our lunch here in a local restaurant we will spend the night in a hotel in Erfoud

 

Day 9: Erfoud _ Tinghir_ Ouarzazate

After brew will have breakfast at the hotel and drive from Erfoud to Ouarzazate it is wonderful road and full of beautiful scenery we will visit Toudgha ‏

The Todgha Gorges are a series of limestone river canyons, or wadi, in the eastern part of the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco, near the town of Tinhir, and we will also visit the City of Roses, we will explore some of the high schools that prepare rose oils for beauty, also a great place to find original Rose Oil, unique in the world along with a lot of other natural beauty products.

We will have lunch on the way before continuing our journey to Ouarzazate where we will spend the night.

 

Day 10 –Ouarzazate Kasbah Ait-Ben-Hoddou and the Medina and Souk of Marrakesh.

Our first stop near to Ouarzazate is the World Heritage Site of Kasbah Ait-Ben-Hoddou. This kasbah (a fortified settlement) was founded in the seventeenth century and lies on the old trading route from Sudan to Marrakesh. The kasbah has been used as a film set for several movies. We then re-cross the Atlas Mountains stopping for lunch in a restaurant before arriving in Marrakech, in the mid-afternoon leaving free time for shopping in the World Heritage Site Souk. The night is spent at the same riad in the Old Town of Marrakech.

 

Day 11 – Transport to the airport

This will be the end of a great trip,  we hope you have a safe trip back, and you are always welcome to return to this country that now holds a special place in your heart.