Saudi: 80 million-year-old rare fossil remains discovered in Kingdom

Saudi: 80 million-year-old rare fossil remains discovered in Kingdom

Within 100 working days in 2022, the Saudi Geological Survey (SGS) announced fossil discoveries in areas in Saudi Arabia, whose ages ranged between 80 and 11 million years.

It stated that its team of fossil exploration and the study of ancient life discovered these fossils during its work at the beginning of February.

The SGS has confirmed that these discoveries indicate the existence of fossil sites in the Kingdom that will be developed in the future as tourist attractions within the scope of the Red Sea development projects.

It indicated that it discovered fossil sites that contain the remains of extinct marine animals in the Azlam Formation in the Tabuk region along the Red Sea coast between the governorates of Duba and Umluj.

The Red Sea and Amala project areas contain fossils of different types of vertebrates and invertebrates, in addition to the remains of plants that lived in shallow and coastal marine environments.

Their age dates back to the ages of middle (Mesozoic) and modern (Neogene) geological life, namely Cretaceous and Miocene.

The SGS said that some of these fossils belong to marine reptiles that were found buried in the sediments of the late Cretaceous period and were identified as mosasaurs and plesiosaurs.

Fossil samples were