First-ever dino fossils unearthed in Saudi Arabia

LONDON: Dinosaur remains have been found in Saudi Arabia for the first time. The teeth of a theropod dinosaur and a sauropod vertebra have been unearthed in the Middle Eastern country. The teeth and bones are approximately 72 million years old.

The newly-identified specimen was excavated from along the coast of the Red Sea. An international team of scientists from Uppsala University, Museum Victoria, Monash University, and the Saudi Geological Survey made the discovery. This has made scientists believe that what is now dry desert was once a beach littered with the bones and teeth of ancient marine reptiles and dinosaurs.

When these dinosaurs were alive, the Arabian landmass was largely underwater and formed the north-eastern coastal margin of the African continent.

"The hardest fossil to find is the first one. Knowing that they occur in a particular area and the circumstances under which they do, makes finding more fossils significantly less difficult," says Tom Rich from Museum Victoria in Australia.

The dinosaur finds were recently published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE and jointly authored by participating researchers from Sweden, Australia and Saudi Arabia.

"Dinosaur fossils are exceptionally rare in the Arabian Peninsula, with only a handful of highly fragmented bones documented this far" said Benjamin Kear, based at Uppsala University in Sweden.

"This discovery is important not only because of where the remains were found, but also because of the fact that we can actually identify them. Indeed, these are the first taxonomically recognizable dinosaurs reported from the Arabian Peninsula," Kear added.

Two types of dinosaurs were described from the assemblage, a bipedal meat-eating abelisaurid distantly related to Tyrannosaurus but only about six metres long, and a plant-eating titanosaur perhaps up to 20 metres in length.

Similar dinosaurs have been found in North Africa, Madagascar and as far away as South America.

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