{"id":279597,"date":"2025-04-11T12:45:12","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T12:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/11\/scotlands-isle-of-skye-was-once-a-dinosaur-promenade\/"},"modified":"2025-04-11T12:45:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T12:45:12","slug":"scotlands-isle-of-skye-was-once-a-dinosaur-promenade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/11\/scotlands-isle-of-skye-was-once-a-dinosaur-promenade\/","title":{"rendered":"Scotland\u2019s Isle of Skye was once a dinosaur promenade"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Scotland\u2019s<\/div> \r\n
\n\t\t\t\t\n\n\n\n\n

Scotland\u2019s remote Isle of Skye was once a bustling dinosaur thoroughfare. A newly discovered set of at least 131 fossilized footprints dating to between 170 million and 166 million years ago reveals that both long-necked sauropods and carnivorous theropods splashed through the shallow waters of what was then a balmy, subtropical lagoon, imprinting their tracks onto the soft sands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These fossil trackways reveal that two main groups of dinosaurs<\/a> casually strolled across what\u2019s now Prince Charles\u2019s Point on the Trotternish Peninsula of the island, paleontologist Tone Blakesley of the University of Edinburgh and colleagues report April 2 in PLOS One.<\/em> Sets of three-toed tracks point to bipedal carnivorous theropods, which were probably species of megalosaurs<\/a>, based on previous fossil data from the region, the researchers say. A second group of footprints, round and huge, were probably left by a species of sauropod.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Based on the spacing of the footprints, the dinosaurs that left these tracks weren\u2019t in any hurry or heading anywhere in particular. The tracks don\u2019t have a consistent direction, and the spacing indicates that the dinosaurs were moving at a walking speed \u2014 in other words, they were casually milling about, the team suggests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two footprints in the sand, with the difference in surface feature heights shown using color, reveals the imprints of two different dinosaurs\u2019 feet at the ancient lagoon. At left, a theropod footprint shows the imprint of three toes, and at right, a sauropod footprint has rounded toes.<\/span>Blakesley et al<\/em>.\/PLOS ONE <\/em>2025 CC-BY 4.0<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fossils of dinosaurs dating to the Middle Jurassic Period, between about 175 million and 161 million years ago, are relatively rare. It was a harrowing time environmentally, marked by widespread volcanism<\/a> and tectonic activity linked to the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea<\/a>, the opening of the central Atlantic Ocean, elevated carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, high temperatures and swelling seas that rose and engulfed much of the land surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those aren\u2019t great conditions for preserving fossils.<\/p>\n\n\n