{"id":451502,"date":"2026-06-21T13:56:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T20:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=451502"},"modified":"2026-06-21T13:56:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T20:56:49","slug":"39-million-years-ago-the-sahara-was-a-much-greener-landscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=451502","title":{"rendered":"39-million-years ago the Sahara was a much greener landscape"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Around 39 million years ago (late middle Eocene, ~Bartonian stage), much of what is now the Sahara Desert in North Africa, including parts of modern Libya, supported a significantly greener, more humid environment than today\u2014not a hyper-arid desert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there are no ultra-high-resolution global climate model simulations focused exclusively on the exact Sahara region at ~39 Ma, multiple lines of paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental evidence from sedimentology, fossils, and broader Eocene climate studies confirm a much greener, more humid North African landscape.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Eocene-Oligocene Transition (EOT)<\/strong>, also known as the Eocene-Oligocene extinction<\/strong> event or “Grande Coupure” in Europe, occurred around 34 million years ago (roughly 33.9\u201333.4 Ma). It marked one of the most significant climatic shifts of the Cenozoic era: the transition from a warm “greenhouse” world<\/strong> to a cooler “icehouse” world<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At ~39 Ma (late middle Eocene, as in Dur At-Talah), North Africa was warmer and wetter, with fluvial-deltaic systems, wetlands, and vegetation supporting diverse mammals and early anthropoid primates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fossil sites like Dur At-Talah<\/strong> (or Dur At-Talah escarpment) in central Libya provide direct insights. This locality dates to approximately 39\u201338 million years ago and preserves a diverse fauna including early primates (anthropoids), rodents, fish, and other vertebrates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sediments and fossils indicate fluvial (river-related) and deltaic environments<\/strong>, with freshwater fish (e.g., bichirs, catfishes, lungfish, and early representatives of modern African groups like cichlids and tigerfish). This points to rivers, lakes, or wetlands rather than barren desert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The presence of primates and other mammals suggests forested or woodland habitats<\/strong> capable of supporting a rich ecosystem. North Africa at this time was warmer and wetter overall during the Eocene’s greenhouse climate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the Eocene (especially the early to middle part), global temperatures were much higher, with elevated CO\u2082 levels. Tropical and subtropical forests extended to higher latitudes, and North Africa had more vegetation and moisture. The region wasn’t uniformly “rainforest” everywhere but featured humid, vegetated landscapes with woodlands, savanna-like areas, rivers, and lakes\u2014far greener than the modern Sahara.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This predates the major global cooling and drying around the Eocene-Oligocene transition<\/strong> (~34 Ma), when Antarctica glaciated and arid conditions intensified in many subtropical regions. The Sahara as a persistent desert is a more recent phenomenon (geologically speaking), with the hyper-arid conditions solidifying later in the Miocene and fluctuating since then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sahara has experienced many humid periods since then, including over 230 precession-driven “Green Sahara” or African Humid Periods recurring roughly every ~21,000 years over the past 8+ million years. The most famous is the Holocene one (~11,000\u20135,000 years ago), when the region had lakes, rivers, grasslands, and human populations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The user’s figure of 39 million years ago aligns well with paleontological finds from Libyan sites in the Sahara region. These discoveries help show how dynamic North Africa’s climate and landscapes have been over deep time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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New late middle Eocene anthropoids from Dur At-Talah, Libya: Implications for early primate dispersal into Afro-Arabia<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“New late middle Eocene anthropoids from Dur At-Talah, Libya: Implications for early primate dispersal into Afro-Arabia”<\/strong> refers to a brand-new 2026 paper in the Journal of Human Evolution by Jean-Jacques Jaeger and colleagues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper builds directly on the team’s earlier 2010 Nature discovery at the same site, which first revealed a surprisingly diverse early anthropoid community in Africa at ~39\u201338 Ma (Bartonian, late middle Eocene). The new work refines and expands that picture with additional tiny dental fossils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Updated Faunal Diversity at Dur At-Talah<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previously known anthropoids from the site:<\/p>\n\n\n\n