The Empty Quarter, the largest unbroken stretch of sand in the world, covers 650,000 square kilometers across Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, and the UAE. It has a hyper-arid climate with low biodiversity, but supports some life, including gazelles, oryx, sandcats, and spiny-tailed lizards. Beneath the dunes are vast oil reserves, and the area was less arid in the past, evidenced by fossils of hippos and water buffaloes. A lost city, Iram of the Pillars, is thought to be in the desert.
Saudi Arabia’s Empty Quarter, known as Rub’ al Khali in Arabic, is one of the least habitable places in the world. It is the largest unbroken stretch of sand in the world and the largest desert in the Arabian Peninsula. Occupying much of the lower quarter of the Arabian Peninsula, the Empty Quarter has an area larger than France, Belgium and the Netherlands combined, covering approximately 650,000 square kilometers (200,000 sq mi). It stretches across the countries of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
Rarely explored until recently, the Empty Quarter is 1,000 km (620 mi) long and 500 km (310 mi) wide. During the summer, temperatures approach 55 degrees C (131 degrees F) at noon. This region is covered in monotonous sand dunes up to 330 m (1,100 ft) high. Many of them are red due to their iron oxide (rust) content. It qualifies as a “hyper-arid” climate, with about 35 mm (1.38 in) of rainfall per year, which is remarkably enough to support some life. Although the area is hyper-arid, it gets more rain than, for example, the Atacama Desert in Chile, which is best described as “rainless” and contains little life.
Although the Empty Quarter has life, it has very low biodiversity. There are only 37 plant species, of which 20 are in the main body of the sands and 17 in the margins. Only one or two are believed to be endemic. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing. Although the vegetation is very sparse, it is evenly distributed, present in a large part of the neighborhood. Animals that live in this area include gazelles, oryx (straight-horned antelopes), sandcats (beautiful wild desert cats about the size of a housecat that get all their water from prey animals), spiny-tailed lizards, and many others.
The Empty Quarter is a mysterious place with many secrets. Beneath its mountainous dunes are vast oil reserves, formed millions of years ago when the area was tropical rainforest. The Empty Quarter was less arid in the past, as evidenced by the fossils of hippos, water buffaloes, and long-horned cattle found there. Camel trains traversed the desert, until it became impassable around AD 300. A lost city, Iram of the Pillars, is thought to be in the desert, and perhaps even an entire lost civilization. A few artifacts have been found using ground-penetrating radar and satellite image analysis, but a lost city remains elusive.
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