The Semail Ophiolite (Oman/UAE)
This section reports on metamorphic aspects of the work of the Hard Rock Group in Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Mike Searle has been working in Oman for his entire career, and since 1990 we have been collaborating in studies of the metamorphic rocks that underlie the ultramafic units, at first the blueschists and eclogites of As Sifah and the Saih Hatat culmination, and later (with Jon Cox and other students) the thin high-temperature metamorphic sole found along the length of the ophiolite.
The link Sole amphibolites takes you to an outline of our recent work on the garnet-clinopyroxene aphibolites at the Sumeini and Wadi Tayyin localities (Cowan et al, 2014).
The link Bani Hamid unit describes our ongoing work on the enigmatic enclave of granulite-facies quartzites, carbonate rocks and metabasites in the northern part of the ophiolite.
[locality map]