In the centre sits a beautiful scarab beetle, carved from Libyan desert glass. Libyan desert glass – raw and carved – is easily available today, but how the glass formed has long puzzled scientists.

Ten years later the British geographer Patrick Clayton was exploring the Libyan Desert along the border of modern Egypt and Libya. Here he discovered some strange pieces of glass in the sand.

The pieces of Libyan desert glass that formed the basis of the study. Author provided The Great Sand Sea Desert stretches over an area of 72,000km² linking Egypt and Libya.

Libyan Desert Glass, an impact glass found in the Saharan Great Sand Sea of the Libyan-Egyptian Libyan Desert. Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0 DEED ShareAlike Lire en français Scientists have traced the ...

A strange type of glass that was discovered in 1933 in the Libyan desert may come from a meteorite, an analysis shows, but impact crater is still missing. When you purchase through links on our ...

A peculiar and mysterious yellow glass can be found in the desert of Egypt and Libya. It has been known about for thousands of years and was famously used to make a scarab for the pectoral of 18th ...

A peculiar and mysterious yellow glass can be found in the desert of Egypt and Libya. It has been known for thousands of years and was famously used to make a scarab for the pectoral of 18th ...

The Libyan Desert Silica Glass, as the material is now called, consists of almost pure silicon-dioxide, like quartz, but its crystal structure is different.

A WIND-WORN lump of clear and transparent, pale yellowish-green silica-glass resembling bottle-glass from the Libyan Desert, has been presented to the Department of Minerals of the British Museum ...

A strange type of glass that was discovered in 1933 in the Libyan desert may come from a meteorite, an analysis shows, but impact crater is still missing.