Wadi Rum, also known as Valley of the Moon, is a desert the size of 720km squared, cut into sandstone and granite rock. Many years ago, the sea formed the strange shapes you see in the sandstone. The highest peak in Wadi Rum is Jabal Um ad Adami (1,840m), which lies close to the Saudia Arabian border.

Yes, the dramatic desert of Wadi Rum in Jordan was once part of a shallow sea during the Cambrian and Ordovician periods, roughly 450 to 500 million years ago. Geologically, the area's iconic red and white sandstone cliffs are actually "sedimentary" deposits—essentially compressed sand and marine silt—that were laid down when the region was submerged. If you look closely at the rock faces in 2026, you can still find fossilized marine life, including trace fossils of ancient trilobites and aquatic worms that burrowed into the sand millions of years ago. Tectonic activity eventually pushed the land upward, and centuries of wind and water erosion "sculpted" the sandstone into the otherworldly canyons and arches we see today. This "sea-to-sand" history is what gives Wadi Rum its unique "lunar" appearance; the red color comes from iron oxide (rust) within the ancient marine sediments, a silent testament to the desert's former life as a thriving underwater ecosystem.