The fossil animals found with the tooth, including sharks, rays, bony fishes, turtles and crocodiles, indicate an estuarine or coastal lagoon environment.
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The fossil animals found with the tooth, including sharks, rays, bony fishes, turtles and crocodiles, indicate an estuarine or coastal lagoon environment.
Because only a single tooth was found, the researcher considers it likely that it was transported before burial from a nearby freshwater body; the lungfish lived in the drainage network of streams that reached the estuary.
Approved version OWNER-REVIEW-20260930T044034414 · last approved 30 September 2026
The tooth was collected in 1976 from the Umm Himar Formation (Paleocene) in the Harrat Hadan area of the At Taif region in the west of the Kingdom, about 2 km north-east of Jabal Umm Himar.
The occurrence in Saudi Arabia represents the easternmost point in the range of this species, which covered almost the entire width of North Africa.
A single right pterygo-palatine tooth plate of a large lungfish of this species was found at Jabal Umm Himar east of At Taif, in the Paleocene Umm Himar Formation.