That kind of landscape forms an original multigraded labyrinth, painted with green, yellow, pink and red sediment of loam.

Fossils of marine animals are known from the Late Cretaceous (probably Upper Cenomanian-Turonian) deposits of the southern part of the Mangyshlak Plateau.

[6] Found specimens are a dolichosaurian thoracic vertebra and teeth of chondrichthyians: hybodontiform Ptychodus and lamniform Protolamna, Cretolamna, Cretoxyrhina and Hispidaspis.

[citation needed] According to Arabic geographers, it was uninhabited until the tenth century when groups opposing the Turkmen Oghuz settled and found sources of water and grassland.

These Turkmen were vassals of the Khazars, at the beginning of the thirteenth century when Yaqut al-Hamawi and Ibn al-Athir mention[citation needed] the name of Mankashlagh.

Ibn al-Athir tells of a Turkish principality with a medina with the same name as the territory that existed from the late eleventh century.

In 1097 a struggle between Kutb al-Din Muhammad, Khwarezm governor of Seljuks and Tugrul Tehghin occurred.

Puntsuk Monchak and Ayuka (1670-1724) deported most of the Cawdor and Igdir groups of Turkmenistan to the Volga basin.

For protecting trade, Anusha Khan annexed it to his territories in 1676 and built a fort at the port of Karagan in 1687.

The Russians under Peter the Great sent an expedition led by the unfortunate Bekovich-Cherkassky, who established three forts on the coast of the Caspian Sea, but they were abandoned after one year.

On July 12, 1918, an Interim Executive Committee, which sought to restore Alexander Kerensky, was established in Ashgabat.

The districts[8] with their populations[9] are: Three localities in the region - Aqtau, Fort-Shevchenko, and Zhanaozen - have city or town status.