Footprints reveal prehistoric Scottish lagoons were stomping grounds for Middle Jurassic dinosaurs

What is it about?

Palaeontological research led by Edinburgh Masters graduate Tone Blakesley, has revealed 131 dinosaur footprints at a newly discovered track site at Prince Charles’s Point on the Isle of Skye’s Trotternish peninsula. The site features some of the longest and youngest known dinosaur trackways in Western Scotland. This includes footprints made by meat-eating theropods and long necked, plant-eating sauropods. The footprints are preserved in a sharply defined rippled sandstone, representing a 167-million-year-old, subtropical lagoon shoreline (margin).

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Photo by Kyle Pasalskyj on Unsplash

Photo by Kyle Pasalskyj on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The discovery has provided researchers with an enriched view into the environmental preferences and behaviours of globally scarce Middle Jurassic aged dinosaurs. One of these findings highlights the habitual preference of lagoonal environments for theropods and sauropods over drier mudflats. The most likely dinosaur trackmakers responsible for these footprints include Megalosaurs – the ancestors of T-Rex, and basal or non-neosauropods – long-necked sauropods similar to Cetiosaurus. In comparison to other Scottish track sites, Prince Charles’s Point uniquely represents a lagoonal assemblage with more theropods than sauropods. The study suggests that the theropods of Skye may have preferred the freshwater environment over more saline habitat recorded at sauropod dominated track sites. Although left behind over a relatively short period prior to being buried, the multi-directional trackways and estimated walking gaits indicate that the dinosaurs were milling around a lagoon margin over a relatively short period of time, similar to how animals congregate around modern-day watering holes. This trend is observed across other lagoon-based dinosaur track sites on Skye and suggests that, regardless of dominance, theropods and sauropods habitually spent time in lagoons over subaerially exposed mudflats. Unlike other dinosaur track sites on Skye, the sauropod footprints at Prince Charles’s Point are represented by large, flat, circular impressions. These were once considered by geologists to be the resting burrows of fish. Today, the study has established that their flatness is due to specific substrate conditions. Under these conditions, the sauropod’s feet would have sunk a short distance into a thin layer of sand and displaced it over a hardened, underlying mud.

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