Landmark dinosaur discoveries in the Middle East that led to Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi

With Stan the T-rex soon to arrive in UAE capital, a look at key finds that show Mena's own prehistoric giants

The fossil skeleton of Stan the Tyrannosaurus rex will be on display at Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi. Victor Besa / The National

Stan, one of the world’s most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons, is among the scientific and ancient treasures that will be displayed at the Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi when it opens in Saadiyat Cultural District on November 22. That alone cements the museum’s status as a major destination for history enthusiasts and a hub for in-house research in palaeontology and geology.

And when the museum opens, Stan will be joined by The March of the Triceratops, a temporary exhibition which showcases the world’s only touring Triceratops herd.

But the presence of dinosaurs in this region goes back far beyond the museum walls. For millions of years, the creatures are thought to have roamed the lands that now form the Middle East and North Africa, leaving behind fossils and footprints that scientists continue to uncover.

Here are some of the key regional discoveries made over the past century.

Morocco

Prof Susannah Maidment with the fossil bones of Spicomellus afer, an armoured dinosaur discovered near Boulemane, Morocco. AFP

In a mountainous stretch called the Kem Kem Beds in Morocco in the late 1990s, American palaeontologist Paul Sereno and his team from the University of Chicago uncovered fossils belonging to several enormous dinosaurs, including the sail-backed Spinosaurus and the sharp-toothed Carcharodontosaurus.

In 2021, more than a century after the first North African discoveries, researchers at London’s Natural History Museum announced another major find, a dinosaur called Spicomellus afer, unearthed in the Middle Atlas Mountains, in Boulemane. Published in Nature Ecology & Evolution in 2021, the fossil is believed to be the oldest-known armoured dinosaur, a plant-eater protected by rows of bony plates and spikes along its back.

The discovery proved that these dinosaurs had already evolved in Africa about 168 million years ago.

Egypt

Palaeontologist Sanaa Al Sayed works on the remains of Mansourasaurus shahinae at Mansoura University in Egypt. Reuters

German palaeontologist Ernst Stromer, one of the pioneers of dinosaur research in North Africa, carried out expeditions in Egypt’s Western Desert in the early 1900s. He found the fossils of two dinosaurs: the carnivore Bahariasaurus and the long-necked plant-eater Aegyptosaurus – in a region referred to as the Bahariya Formation.

In 2001, American palaeontologist Joshua Smith discovered the remains of Paralititan stromeri, described as a titanosaur, one of the largest creatures to walk the Earth. Egyptian scientist Hesham Sallam from Mansoura University went one better, finding a near-complete fossil of Mansourasaurus shahinae.

In 2022, Canada’s Royal Tyrrell Museum and Mansoura University teamed up to uncover a neck bone from an abelisaurid, another meat-eater.

Oman

The Arabian Peninsula was first placed on the palaeontology map in 2000, when British researchers Hill and Walkden from the University of Aberdeen came across fragments in the Al-Khod Conglomerate, a region near Oman's capital, Muscat. The fossil parts of the plant-eating ornithopods and long-necked sauropods proved these dinosaurs had reached the region by the Late Cretaceous period, which spanned roughly 100 to 66 million years ago.

A 67-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton named Stan on display before its public auction at Christie's in New York. All photos: Reuters

It is one of the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus skeletons discovered.

It is named after paleontologist Stan Sacrison, who found it.

High-quality casts of its bones are on display in museums around the world.

The fearsome skull of Stan.

Its huge teeth, designed to tear flesh.

Stan was sold for $31.8 million in 2020.

Saudi Arabia

Where Oman discovered only fragments, Saudi Arabia became the first country in the Gulf confirmed to have dinosaur fossils in 2013. Researcher Benjamin Kear and his team from Sweden’s Uppsala University found the remains of seven tail bones from a titanosaur and two teeth from an abelisaurid along the Adaffa Formation on the kingdom’s north-west coast. The fossils are estimated to be more than 72 million years old, proving that large dinosaurs once roamed what is now Saudi Arabia.

Algeria

In 2005, scientists from Algeria and France discovered a nearly complete skeleton of the long-necked Chebsaurus algeriensis near the town of Ain El Kebira. Described in the journal Comptes Rendus Palevol, the fossils were found in rocks dating back about 160 million years and are regarded as one of the most accurate and well-preserved dinosaur finds in North Africa.

Sudan

More remains of sauropods and meat-eating theropods, estimated to have lived about 95 million years ago, were found in Sudan’s Wadi Milk Formation, about 700km north of Khartoum, by palaeontologists Werner and Weishampel in 2002. The University of Khartoum later uncovered additional fossils in the Shendi Formation, further illustrating how dinosaurs lived in the region during the Cretaceous period.