First Dinosaurs Identified from Saudi Arabia

Dinosaur fossils are incredibly rare in the Arabian Peninsula. A global team of experts from Uppsala University, Gallery Victoria, Monash University, and the Saudi Geological Survey have now discovered the initial document of dinosaurs from Saudi Arabia.

Exactly what is now completely dry desert was as soon as a beach littered with the bones and teeth of ancient aquatic reptiles and dinosaurs.

A strand of vertebrae from the tail of a huge “Brontosaurus-like” sauropod, in addition to some dropped teeth from a carnivorous theropod stand for the initial officially determined dinosaur fossils from Saudi Arabia, and were found in the north-western part of the Kingdom along the shore of the Red Sea.

The remains were found during excavations carried out by a team of researchers working under the auspices of the Saudi Geological Study, Jeddah.

The dinosaur locates were just recently posted in the clinical journal PLOS ONE and collectively authored by participating analysts from Sweden, Australia and Saudi Arabia.

“Dinosaur fossils are incredibly unusual in the Arabian Peninsula, with just a handful of extremely fragmented bones documented this much” says Dr Benjamin Kear, based at Uppsala University in Sweden and lead author of the study.

“This discovery is necessary not only as a result of where the remains were located, but also as a result of the reality that we can actually recognize them. Certainly, these are the initial taxonomically identifiable dinosaurs mentioned from the Arabian Peninsula” Dr Kear proceeds.

“Dinosaur remains from the Arabian Peninsula and the area east of the Mediterranean Sea are extremely unusual because sedimentary rocks placed in streams and waterways throughout the Age of Dinosaurs are rare, particularly in Saudi Arabia itself” claims Dr Tom Rich from Museum Victoria in Australia.

When these dinosaurs were alive, the Arabian landmass was largely underwater and developed the north-western seaside frame of the African continent.

“The hardest fossil to locate is the initial one. Knowing that they occur in a particular area and the situations under which they do, makes locating much more fossils significantly much less hard” says Dr Rich.

The teeth and bones are approximately 72 million years of ages.

2 types of dinosaur were described from the assemblage, a bipedal meat-eating abelisaurid distantly associated with Tyrannosaurus but just approximately six metres long, and a plant-eating titanosaur maybe up to 20 metres in length.

Comparable dinosaurs have actually been discovered in North Africa, Madagascar and as far away as South The united state.

First Dinosaurs Identified from Saudi Arabia