Desert environments: landscapes and stratigraphy

It is common to think of hot deserts, i.e. hot arid or dry lands, as areas of little rain situated in the middle parts of the world, that are simply 'just there'. However, most of the world's deserts have a long geological history, sometimes of 50 million years or more and ways have been developing for some time now, particularly from geomorphological studies, of not only erecting the law of superposition of strata for the desert but also 'absolute' dating. The authors have often worked commercially in deserts world-wide but their recent experiences in the Oman have brought home to them the excellent work that has been going on in the last two or three decades in evaluating the geological history of deserts. The Oman experience is described in a feature in the next issue.