Sana'a: Scientists have discovered dinosaur footprints in Yemen - the first such discovery in the Arabian peninsula.

The 150 million-year-old footprints were from a herd of sauropods walking along Yemen's coastal mudflat, about 50 miles north of the capital, Sana'a.

Sauropods were the largest land animals in earth's history. The plant eaters walked on four legs and existed about 200 million years ago.

"Until 10 years not even bones were known from the Arabian peninsula and at last we have some dinosaur tracks," said palaeontologist Anne Schulp.

"The nice thing is we finally filled in a bit of a blank spot in the dinosaur map," Schulp said.

Palaeontologists have so far unearthed only a few dinosaur fossils from the Arabian peninsula and possible fragments of a long-necked dinosaur from Yemen.