It wasn't just the beauty of the polished stone block walls or the fact that this abandoned city sits atop a narrow ridge more than 2400 meters above sea level.
VOA: standard.2009.12.15
Mr Mitchell said that at low tide only a narrow channel of sea remained.
As in the Gulf, the oil deposits were created during a period of flourishing plant life 80 million years ago, when rivers draining Africa and South America dumped sediments into the narrow and shallow sea then separating the two continents.