Fezouata Fossil Beds

The Fezouata shales outcrop in low hills near Zagora and are one of the significant fossil discoveries of recent decades. Most fossil deposits preserve only hard parts - shells, bones, teeth - so entire soft-bodied groups vanish from the record; a handful of sites worldwide, called Lagerstätten, preserve soft tissue, and the Burgess Shale is the famous one, from about 508 million years ago. Fezouata is around 480 million years old, in the Early Ordovician, and preserves soft-bodied animals from a period that had been almost blank - including forms thought to have died out with the Cambrian, showing they persisted far longer, along with early arthropods, marrellomorphs and giant filter-feeding anomalocaridids. It has changed the understanding of what happened between the Cambrian explosion and the Ordovician radiation. It is a scientific site, not a visitor one: unregulated collecting and export are illegal.

Highlights

• Soft-bodied preservation - a rare deposit type keeping tissue, not just shells and bone.
• 480 million years - Early Ordovician, filling a near-blank period in the record.
• Survivors from the Cambrian - forms thought extinct that persisted far longer here.
• A working scientific site - not developed for visitors, and collecting is regulated.

When to go

October to April; summer is too hot to walk the hills. Half a day.

What to expect

There is nothing built here - no centre, signage or paths, and without a guide you will see grey hills. Collecting and exporting fossils without permits is illegal and enforced. Much of what is sold as Fezouata material in Moroccan shops is from elsewhere or fabricated. Summer heat is severe.

Nearby

Zagora is south-east; Agdz is north up the Draa.