The quarry of Ahl al Oughlam is situated on the left-hand side of the road leading to Tit Mellil, about 2 km before this city, and about 10 km from the present-day sea-shore and today at the South-Eastern limit of the city of Casablanca, the rapid growth of which will probably incorporate the site in the near future.
Air view
It was first mentioned by Pierre Biberson in 1956 [Nouvelles précisions sur les gisements à "Pebble-Culture" des plages marines soulevées du Quaternaire ancien de Casablanca (Maroc). Comptes-Rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l'Académie des Sciences, 243: 1227-1229] under the name of "Carrière Déprez". According to this author, it illustrates, at an altitude of about 100 m above sea level, two phases of a marine transgression. The second phase, which he called Messaoudian, being the first Pleistocene transgression of the Atlantic coast. On an erosional surface at the base of the Messaoudian, he described [P.Biberson, Le cadre paléogéographique de la Préhistoire du Maroc Atlantique, Publ.Serv.Antiq.Maroc, 16, 1961 and : Le Paléolithique inférieur du Maroc Atlantique, ibid., 17, 1961], from within a marine conglomerate, some flaked pebbles that he thought were man-made artefacts. They are more likely to be of natural origin [Raynal & al., 1990]. Higher in the section, these marine deposits gradually pass to consolidated beach sandy deposits. The Ahl al Oughlam vertebrate fauna comes from fissures and karstic fillings within this calcarenite, at about 108m NGM. The dating of the fauna to about 2.5 Ma demonstrates that the Messaoudian is still of Pliocene age.
Geological map of the Casablanca area (Ministère de l'énergie et des Mines, Royaume du Maroc, 1987) with the dunes (yellow) along the main plio-pleistocene shores.
Associated bones are very rare (they are mainly carpals and tarsals,
bound by strong ligaments), and most of the bones are heavily
broken. Only for the Suid Kolpochoerus is the skull represented
by several specimens, because it is very robust in this genus.
Still, thanks to the extreme richness of the site, where bone
is often more abundant than sediment, an exceptional collection
was made (more than 4000 specimens registered to-date), which
is by far the most important of the whole late Cenozoic of Northern
Africa.
Some of the Ungulates may have fallen in the fissures or die naturally
there, bust most of them must have been carried in by Carnivores,
extremely diverse (21 species of terrestrial ones). Some of them
used the fissures as dens or shelters.