Khartoum 9-28-2022 (SUNA) – A geology team from the Regional Geology Department of the General Department of Geological Surveys of the General Authority for Geological Research – the technical arm of the Ministry of Minerals managed to discover the oldest marine sedimentary formation in Sudan dating back to the Cambrian period, which is about 500 million years old. It was called the formation of (Al Bareda and Abu Taleh). The team attributed the age determination to a fossil belonging to the phylum of sponges called Archaeocyatha, which is an extinct reef-building species living in marine environments, which existed at the beginning of the Cambrian era and became extinct at the end of it, that is, its age dates back to more than 500 million years. The team that carried out the mission revealed that in 2015 they began geological mapping of the Nile State, and after a detailed study, the possibility of ancient shallow or deep marine environments was noticed through what was discovered from visible and microscopic fossils.
The team indicated that the Sedimentary and Fossils Unit at the General Organization for Geological Research has been working on deducting the Jabal Al-Bareda and Abu Taleh segment and has worked on it in a detailed study by assigning a geological mission in the year 2017 for detailed mapping to take surface and microscopic samples and analyze them outside Sudan in the State of Morocco. The results of the rocky and microscopic samples are encouraging to resolve Shallow and deep marine environment.
The team indicated that the research operations continued for 5 years until it culminated in its publication in the Journal of Earth Sciences from the Madrig Publishing Center, an international center specialized in publishing scientific papers. The journal’s geologists accepted the researchers.
The team pointed out that the importance of scientific research lies in resolving the formation environment of the marine area, which leads to the minerals expected to be present in marine depositional environments, most of which are ores that enter the industry of drilling fluids ores, in addition to the economic importance in settling the industry of bentonite and barite ores.
Calcium and silica carbonate in Sudan and their production by geological research.
The geological team revealed that, after the encouraging results, drilling operations (trenchers) had to be carried out to ascertain the ores of drilling fluid minerals such as bentonite.
And barite, white sand and calcium carbonate. The mission was to drill in the year 2021 January, when 12 trenches were dug and samples were taken for external analysis (XRD & XRF Analysis). The samples showed barite, vermiculite, bentonite (sodium and calcium) and white sand extensions to far depths. Trenches were drawn and the detailed geological map was updated. It is worth noting that the work team that wrote the research, which was published in a specialized scientific journal, was led by a consultant geologist, Dr. Sheikh Muhammad Abdul Rahman and geologists Tariq Jalal Muhammad, Ashraf Muhammad Khairy, Khalid Abdul Rahman Ali, Ibrahim Khalifa Ibrahim, Ahmed Tariq Abdul Rahman and Noureddin Hassan Abker.
