Distinctive dinosaur footprints and handprints found on Skye
Palaeontologists from the University of Edinburgh have uncovered oval stegosaur footprints and handprints on Skye.
Palaeontologists from the University of Edinburgh have discovered Stegosaurs roamed the Isle of Skye around 170 million years ago.
The plant-eating dinosaur is among the most recognisable dinosaurs in the world with its distinctive diamond-shaped back plates and tail spikes, and could grow to almost 30 feet long and weigh more than six tonnes.
The team found a mixture of stegosaur footprints and handprints making the site on the Scottish isle one of the oldest fossil records in the world.
It's the only place in Scotland where dinosaurs once roamed and one of the few places in the world where fossils from the Middle Jurassic period can be found.
Dr Steve Buratte who was involved in the study and led the field team says the findings give a much clearer picture of the dinosaurs that lived in Scotland 170 million years ago. He said:
“We knew there were giant long-necked sauropods and jeep-sized carnivores, but we can now add plate-backed stegosaurs to that roster, and maybe even primitive cousins of the duck-billed dinosaurs too. These discoveries are making Skye one of the best places in the world for understanding dinosaur evolution in the Middle Jurassic.”
The site on the island’s north-east coast – which was once a mudflat on the edge of a shallow lagoon on a long-lost island in the Atlantic – contains a mixture of footprints, and reveals that dinosaurs on Skye were more diverse than previously thought.
A team of palaeontologists from the University of Edinburgh discovered a short sequence of distinctive, oval footprints and handprints belonging to a stegosaur, left by a young animal or a small-bodied member of the stegosaur family as it ambled across the mudflat.
The discovery means that the site at Brothers’ Point – called Rubha nam Brathairean in Gaelic – is now recognised as one of the oldest-known fossil records of this major dinosaur group found anywhere in the world.
Discoveries on the Scottish island have provided scientists with vital clues about the early evolution of major dinosaur groups, including huge, long-necked sauropods and fierce, meat-eating cousins of Tyrannosaurus rex.
Paige dePolo, a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences, who led the study, said: “These new tracksites help us get a better sense of the variety of dinosaurs that lived near the coast of Skye during the Middle Jurassic than what we can glean from the island's body fossil record. In particular, Deltapodus tracks give good evidence that stegosaurs lived on Skye at this time.”