About 15 kilometres northeast of Shakhrisabz, in the hills near the town of Kitab, lies a geological reserve protecting one of the world's most complete sequences of Devonian-era rock. The exposed strata record a roughly 407-million-year-old seafloor environment — coral reefs, brachiopods, primitive fish — from when this part of Central Asia lay at the bottom of a shallow sea.
The reserve is not a mainstream tourist destination, but for anyone interested in palaeontology or geology it is extraordinary. The rock faces contain visible fossils, and the sequence has been used as a global reference point (a GSSP, or Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point) for defining a major geological boundary. Getting here requires a taxi from Shakhrisabz and some willingness to explore; there is no formal visitor infrastructure, but the site is accessible on foot from the main road.