Umm Dababeyya is a natural reserve located in Luxor Governorate by the sedimentary sequence of the Eastern Desert Mountains. Umm Dababeyya has an estimated age of 50-55 million years old. The natural reserve is considered to show an ideal geological sequence that represents a time scale considered to be the most perfect strata in the world. The strata represent a history of the beginnings of modern fauna and flora. This precious section of the natural reserve has allowed geologist estimate the age of the earth by identifying the marine sediments and determining the processes that coincided with their deposition and the creatures that contributed to each stratum.

The site has been declared a natural reserve by Prime Minister’s Decree number 109 under Egyptian natural reserve Law 102/1983, for its unique value as the best world representative of the Palaeocene/Eocene transition 55-50 million years ago. Umm Dababeyya is the 27^th of Egypt’s natural reserves.  Umm Dababeyya is a true time measure that can, through its old substrata, be used to accurately determine the age of the Earth.