Gus Van Beek, curator of Old World anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, said 'it's certainly possible' Shisr is Ubar.

'What is emerging is a clear image of a flourishing urban civilization' in Oman and Yemen at the same time civilized life existed to the north in Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, Mandaville said. The oldest cities in nearby Yemen date to about 1800 B.C. Mandaville said if Zarins's preliminary dating is correct, urban development in the region began about 1,000 years earlier than once thought. 'There's a good chance that - with qualified archaeologists such as these - we may have found Ubar,' said Jon Mandaville, a Middle East history professor at Oregon's Portland State University. The city probably had fewer than 100 residents, but was surrounded by numerous campsites marked by pottery, fire pits and charcoal, Clapp said. Clapp and Hedges said evidence indicates the city fell into a sinkhole created when an underground limestone cavern collapsed. Lawrence, the British World War I soldier known as Lawrence of Arabia, called Ubar 'the Atlantis of the sands,' after the legendary sunken continent.ДЄccording to legend, Ubar - known as Iram, the 'city of towers,' in Islam's sacred Koran - was destroyed during a disaster about A.D. If that proves true, the discovery pushes back the date of the spread of civilization in southern Arabia by a thousand years, Clapp said. He said expedition archaeologist Juris Zarins, of Southwest Missouri State University, estimated the city may have been inhabited from 2800 B.C. 'This is a significant and lasting legacy of the space shuttle Challenger, which supplied the first clues for our search,' said Clapp, a Los Angeles filmmaker.

28, 1986, killing all seven crew members. Researchers found the city by tracing ancient desert roads detected in pictures taken from several spacecraft, including radar and optical cameras carried by Challenger in October 1984, said Ronald Blom, a geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.Д¬hallenger exploded after liftoff Jan. 26, researchers have overcome sandstorms and deadly vipers to locate the city's octagon-shaped stone walls, 6- to 8-foot-tall remnants of seven of its eight 30-foot-tall mud-brick towers, various rooms, frankincense burners and thousands of pieces of pottery, Clapp and Hedges said. Ruins of the oasis city were discovered mostly buried under sand at a well site named Shisr in southern Oman's barren 'Empty Quarter.' Hedges speculated the city may have been the earliest known shipping center for frankincense - a fragrant gum resin harvested farther south - and possibly was the source of frankincense offered to Jesus by one of the wise men. LOS ANGELES - The lost city of Ubar, called 'the Atlantis of the Sands' by Lawrence of Arabia, has been found in remote southern Oman using pictures taken from the space shuttle Challenger, explorers announced here last week.Д®xpedition leaders Nicholas Clapp and George R.

Ubar the lost city of towers