The route also passes through a fossil bed and thus requires a special park permit to be in the area.

There are also wadi walks to explore fossil beds and guided snorkelling on the reef.

The bulk of the fossil bed consists of primitive plants (which had water-conducting cells and sporangia, but no true leaves), along with arthropods, lichens, algae and fungi.

It did not take them long to discover fossil beds of a richness and variety beyond the wildest dreams of their colleagues in the old world.

Newspapers, and by extension their readers, are on their way to the fossil beds as sharper, fastermoving websites bite and claw at their lumbering flesh.