Experts from universities including Aberystwyth in Wales have now pinpointed the age of a star dune in a remote area of Morocco and uncovered details about its formation and how it moves across the desert. The team, which was also made up of University of London academics, travelled to the south-east of Morocco to study a 100-metre high and 700-metre wide dune in the Erg Chebbi sand sea known as Lala Lallia, which means the “highest sacred point” in the Berber language. They discovered that the very base of the dune was 13,000 years old but were surprised that the upper part of the structure had only been formed in the last 1,000 years or so. Luminescence dating techniques developed at Aberystwyth were used to discover the last time minerals in the sand were exposed to sunlight to determine their age. The same luminescence technique was used to date remnants of what is thought to be the world’s oldest known wooden structure, an arrangement of logs on the bank of a river bordering Zambia and Tanzania that predates the rise of modern humans.
SOURCE: POPULAR SCIENCE