First dinosaur tracks found in Arabian Peninsula

"The nice thing about tracks is you can tell what these guys

were doing," Schulp said. "You can put some life into the

fossils."

The researchers had first found evidence of a large ornithopod -- a two-legged, plant-eating dinosaur -- and then discovered the sauropods' tracks close by.

Schulp and his colleague Mohammed Al-Wosabi of the University of Yemen measured the shape and angle of the different digits in one of the prints to identify the bipedal dinosaur as an ornithopod.

They then used the size, shape and spacing of the other prints to determine body size, travel speed and other distinguishing features of the sauropod herd, they reported in the journal PLoS ONE on Wednesday.

"We really want to learn when did which dinosaurs live, where, and why was that," Schulp said. "How did the distribution change over time, why did one replace another and move from one place to another?"

The paper is available at: here

(Editing by Matthew Jones)