Sources and genesis of the Pleistocene gravelly deposits in Northern Kuwait

The Dibdibba Formation is of Pleistocene age and consists of a fluviatile sequence of ungraded, often cross-bedded sand and gravels intercalated with minor sandy clay layers. It occurs in the northern desert of Kuwait as subparallel elongated ridges trending NE-SW. Structures and mineralogy of the Dibdibba deposits suggest that they have been derived from the basement complex of the northeastern area of Saudi Arabia as sheet floods and deposited in the alluvial fan of the Wadi Ar-Rimmah-Al Batin valley system. Floods transporting these deposits were intermittent; the gravelly bands were deposited during severe floods and the sandy beds during relatively quiet floods.