What Minerals Lie Beneath the Arabian Shield in Saudi Arabia?

The Arabian Shield, located west of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, contains various metallic minerals such as gold, copper, rare earth elements, tin, tungsten, and uranium associated with granite. Additionally, it contains gneiss, schist, zinc, lead, iron, nickel, rare earth elements, and other mineral deposits typically associated with tectonically active plates and evolving mountain systems.

The oldest rocks in the Saudi part of the shield range from 1.8 to 2.6 billion years old. Mineral resources in the Arabian Shield have been exploited for over three thousand years, with active gold mining taking place today. Exploration is ongoing for volcanic massive sulfides and deposits formed by hydrothermal solutions. The concentration of mineral deposits tends to occur in specific mineral belts due to geological factors.

The Arabian Shield forms the western part of the Arabian Peninsula, covering 630,000 km. It stretches from southern Jordan to Yemen, covering the western of the Kingdom. The Arabian Plate length itself is approximately 2,600 km long from north to south and about three thousand km wide from east to west.