Morocco Fossil Tours 11 Days

Welcome to Morocco! Your guided Morocco tour begins with a pick-up from the airport in Casablanca or Marrakech, followed by a transfer to your hotel or riad with our experienced driver. Depending on your flight arrival time, we can include a short sightseeing tour before heading to your accommodation.

The perfect starting city for our 11-day Morocco Fossil Tour is either Marrakech or Casablanca. If you prefer to start from a different city, we will customize the itinerary accordingly.

• Overnight in Marrakech

We leave the Red City and drive towards the High Atlas Mountains, crossing the Tizi n’Tichka pass (2260 meters). On the way, we stop at Sidi Rahal to visit the Triassic lava agate mine. Continuing along the Ounila Valley off-road route, we discover Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Eocene layers while following the salt route, where salt is still mined, until we reach the 17th-century UNESCO site of Ksar Ait Benhaddou. This adobe fortress, best known as the setting for the film The Gladiator, still houses a few families and showcases traditional kasbah architecture. We then continue to Ouarzazate, Africa’s Hollywood, where we’ll spend the night.

• Overnight in Ouarzazate

From Ouarzazate, we travel along the Draa Valley to an Ordovician layer containing giant cold-water trilobites found in the lower layer of the Fezouta Shale, which can reach 20 to 30 cm in length and are still being discovered in this mine. We continue on the road to Tazzarine, passing the Ksar of Tamnougalt, to visit the Saredrar Orthoceras quarry. This quarry contains cephalopods with straight shells, believed to be the ancestors of ammonites. Much of what is found at this site is taken to Erfoud and transformed into beautiful and functional items. Later, during the Morocco Fossils tour, we will stop in Erfoud. Alnif, one of Morocco’s most important trilobite sites of fossils in Morocco, will be our next destination, where we’ll spend the night in a typical hotel surrounded by many fossil shops.

• Overnight in Alnif

For this day of this  guided tour of morocco we will have time to browse the fossil shops for complete examples before visiting several sites to look for Cambrian Paradoxides and Cambropellas trilobites, as well as the Tiskaouine mountain, which is mined for Ordovician Neseuretus, Colpocorypte, and Flexicalymens trilobites. In Alnif, we return to the same hotel.

• Overnight in Alnif

We cross this ancient landscape by following some of the old Paris Dakar Rally routes, and our first stop is Boudid, a Devonian limestone area with an extensive formation called the Tazoulait Formation and nearby another area with many fossils scattered on the surface. Atchana is another Devonian formation where Dicranurus monstrosus and Paralejurus spatuliformis trilobites are mined at the Ihandar Formation. It is likely that we will encounter fossil miners in these locations, and you will be able to interact with them and ask them questions.  Our Fossils Tour continues as we travel deep into the Sahara to the Mharech oasis, where we stay in a traditional adobe kasbah hotel.

• Overnight in Foum M'harech

Foum-Mharech (Imi n Mharech in Berber), an isolated 45-metre remnant of a volcano formed by hydrothermal vents, is visible in the distance; this is our focus this morning, where corals, trilobites, and crinoids abound. Rare placoderm fish discoveries have been made here. Jbel el Mrakib is one of several sites in the Maider basin where brachiopods from Devonian layers can be found. We follow the Dakar tracks to the main road at Taouz, where there are some petroglyphs, and spend the night in a Kasbah hotel near the Erg Chebbi dunes.

• Overnight in Merzouga

Today, we return to Taouz and then to the famous Kem Kem beds, which contain Cretaceous-era rocks. Teeth and bones of Spinosaurus and Carcharodonosaurus have been discovered here, as well as crocodiles, dinosaurs, and fish. Another site near Taouz with closely folded Silurian, Devonian, and Ordovician layers and criniods with their labolith. The Filon or Vein 12 mine was once a lead mine; it is now mined for Vanadinite, Hematite, and Byrite, among other minerals, and is one of Morocco’s most mineral-rich sites. We return to Merzouga and stay at the same hotel. We have the option of spending the night in a desert camp and taking a sunset camel ride.

• Overnight in Merzouga

Leaving the golden dunes of Erg Chebbi, we travel north to Rissani, where we stop at an upper Devonian site with orthoceras and ammonoids visible in massive slabs of red limestone. We also go to Kem Kem and Hamar Laghdad, which are Devonian cold seep mud volcano mounds that once supported rich coral reefs. After that, we go to Erfoud, the fossil capital of the world, to see some bell pits where crinoids are mined. The Erfoud quarry contains Orthoceras slabs with goniatites and Devonian rocks. We will visit a factory in the city where the slabs are processed into a variety of functional and visually appealing items. There’s also a museum of minerals and fossils, including dinosaur bones, where you can see many of the fossils we saw on our tour of Alnif. We’ll be spending the night in Erfoud.

• Overnight in Erfoud

Leaving Erfoud, we travel through palm groves and villages to Tinghir, where we take the road up to the Todra Gorge, which features 300-metre-high Jurassic-era walls carved by the river’s waters, making it a popular destination for international rock climbers. On our way back to the city, we detour through the Dades Valley and visit another gorge. This gorge has unusual geological features that have formed interesting shapes as a result of erosion. We return to the valley, following the Dades River as it flows through ancient kasbahs and rose and crop fields. After lunch, we continue to Skoura Palm Grove and Ouarzazate’s cinema city. We can stop to visit one of the Kasbahs before continuing on to Oasis Fint for the night.

• Overnight in Oasis Fint

After a leisurely breakfast, we set out for the High Atlas Mountains, where we will cross the high pass at 2260 meters, passing through many small villages, fields, and pasturelands. We return to Marrakech, where you have the rest of the day free to have an own customizable tour.

• Overnight in Marrakech

On the last day of your geological, mineral, and Morocco fossils tour, you will have free time in Marrakech before heading to the airport for your departure from Marrakech or Casablanca.