Was a Giant Skeleton Uncovered in Saudi Arabia?

In the decades since Saudi Arabia struck oil in the 1930s — becoming the largest global oil exporter and joining world powers as a major trading partner — U.S.-Saudi interests have increasingly overlapped. In November 2025, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with U.S. President Donald Trump in a scene The New York Times said highlighted both Saudi Arabia's and the U.S.'s evolving political personalities.

Oil has not only provided Saudi Arabia the leverage to shape global diplomacy and trade policy, it expanded the scope of the nation's internal development exponentially. For example, Crown Prince Mohammed announced plans in 2022 to construct a "skyscraper megacity" in which 9 million residents would live in a mirrored corridor stretching 105 miles long as part of Saudi Vision 2030 — an ambitious government-launched development plan. The largest Gulf state continues to push technological advancement, such as by performing the world's first fully robotic heart transplant without opening the patient's chest in 2024 or installing high-tech umbrellas to protect pilgrims from the heat in Medina.

We've reported on numerous ties between U.S. leaders and Saudi Arabia, including Trump's financial investments in the Saudi economy and a claim that Saudi Arabia gave Ivanka Trump $100 million, in addition to comments by then-Sen. Joe Biden in 1986 regarding the necessity of an Israeli state in the context of opposing an arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

Here are 19 times Snopes fact-checked rumors related to the Gulf state: