BONNIE PRINTS ON SKYE
Scottish isle’s giant dino tracks
SCIENTISTS have found dinosaur footprints that were made by an ancestor of the T. Rex.
A team discovered the 170-millionyear-old tracks in a muddy lagoon off the northeast coast of the Isle of Skye.
Most of the 50 prints were made by “older cousins” of the T. Rex – theropods that stood up to six feet tall – and by sauropods, similar sized longnecked cousins of the brontosaurus.
These are the second set of dinosaur prints found on Skye – the first was in 2015 – but the recent fossils are in older rocks than the first find. The largest print, left by a sauropod, is more than 27in across, while the biggest theropod track is around 20in across.
The find, from the Middle Jurassic, is globally important as few fossils from the period have been discovered.
Dr Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh led the field team.
He said: “The more we look on the Isle of Skye, the more dinosaur footprints we find. This new site records two different types of dinosaurs – long-necked cousins of brontosaurus and sharp-toothed cousins of T. Rex – hanging around a shallow lagoon.”
Dr Brusatte said the animals lived on Skye “back when Scotland was much warmer and dinosaurs were beginning their march to global dominance”.
The find suggests that dinosaurs were not strictly land-based, as once assumed, but spent long spells in water. They didn’t swim, but waded into the plant-rich environments for food.
Scientists analysed around 50 footprints in a tidal area at Brothers’ Point, a headland on Skye’s Trotternish peninsula. They used drone photographs to map the site. Tidal conditions, weathering and changes to the landscape made studying the fossils difficult.
But they managed to identify two trackways and dozens of isolated prints.
Age, in millions of years, of dinosaur footprints found on Isle of Skye