Two dinosaur species discovered in Saudi Arabian dig

Scientists working in Saudi Arabia have formally identified the first dinosaur fossils ever to have come from the nation.

The find is not only a rarity for Saudi Arabia, but for the entire Arabian Peninsula, where to-date only a handful of bone fragments have been found. Like all other dinosaur bones found in the region, the specimens from Saudi Arabia were fragments as well, excavated in the northwest part of the country along the coast of the Red Sea.

The bones were identified as a string of vertebrae from the tail of a Brontosaurus-like sauropod and teeth from a carnivorous dinosaur, likely a theropod. Scientists dated the fossils to be about 72 million years old, placing them from the Late Cretaceous era. The theropod is thought to be a 6-meter-long bi-pedal meat-eater distantly related to Tyrannosaurus rex, while the sauropod was a plant-eating titanosaur that may have been up to 20 meters in length.