ABSTRACT
The oases of Kharga, Dakhla and Farafra, and their surrounding areas in the southern and central parts of the Western Desert of Egypt, afford excellent exposures of Cretaceous and lower Tertiary. This chapter deals with the geology of an area of about 90,000 km2 within these surroundings. Outside the limits of the stretch under discussion, and to the north and east of the Kharga uplift, the Assiut-Upper Nile Valley basin is delineated. It should be mentioned that the Assiut-Khaiga well, drilled in the Assiut basin to the north of Kharga, bottomed in lower Senonian at about 820 m below sea level. During Ihronian, Coniacian and Santonian times, the Bahariya arch represented an area of erosion in this part of the Dakhla Basin. Meanwhile, the southern parts received fluvial sediments of the Taref Formation at least during the early Turanian. Following the tectonically-controlled early Turonian regression and the subsequent periods of intense erosion, a renewed subsidence affected the Kharga-Farafra stretch.
