Evidence of dinosaurs walking around Saudi Arabia in ancient days has been scarce; until now.
Researchers uncovered the first evidence of dinosaurs in the Arabian Peninsula, an Uppsala University news release reported.
The groundbreaking fossils are believed to be a vertebrate from the tail of a "Brontosaurus-like" sauropod along with teeth from a "carnivorous theropod." The remains were found in a desert region that may have once been a beach in the north-western part of the kingdom.
"Dinosaur fossils are exceptionally rare in the Arabian Peninsula, with only a handful of highly fragmented bones documented this far" Doctor Benjamin Kear, of Uppsala University in Sweden and lead author of the study, said in the news release.
"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 said.
Fossils may be so rare in the area because sedimentary rock (which usually contains ancient remains) that was normally deposited in streams and rivers at the time of death is scarce in the region, according to Doctor Tom Rich from Museum Victoria in Australia.
The researchers believe these teeth date back about 72 million years. During that time a majority of the Arabian landmass is believed to have been submerged in water.
"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," Rich said.
The dinosaurs were classified as "a bipedal meat-eating abelisaurid distantly related to Tyrannosaurus but only about six [meters] long, and a plant-eating titanosaur perhaps up to 20 [meters] in length," the news release reported.
These types of dinosaurs have also been uncovered in South America, Madagascar, and North Africa.
