>The cobbles or pebbles may have nothing to do with widespread flooding.
What does "pebbly sandstone sheets, basal scours, conglomeratic coarse
sediments" sound like to you? To me they sound like sheet wash at least
and possibly debris flows as the authors of the more recent evaluation in
Geology suggest.
On another topic, I would like to get your read ont he Nubian Sandstone
that ranges in age from lower Paleozoic to Eocene, and is widespread in the
Middle East. I just ran across across a thesis by Farooq Abdulsattar M.
Sharief, Depositional enviroment and regional significance of the Sakara
Sandstone, Northwest Saudi Arabia (M. S. Thesis, Rice University, 1974).
He describes the supposed Middle Cretaceous deposit as having a lower
contact that is "conformable and gradational with the underlying sediments
of the Lower Devonian." This interests me, both because it is not unlike
the situation with the Nubian, but also because it is in the same part of
the world. I would really like to give the Nubian some careful study.
Art
http://chadwicka.swau.edu