SCIENTISTS have discovered new evidence the stegosaurus roamed the Isle of Skye roughly 170 million years ago.
A team of palaeontologists from the University of Edinburgh discovered a short sequence of distinctive, oval footprints and handprints belonging to a stegosaurus, left by a young animal or small-bodied member of the stegosaurs family as it ambled across the mudflat.
Around 50 newly identified footprints were discovered on the north-east coast of Skye after the spring storms of 2017 moved boulders along the beach, making the site one of the oldest-known fossil records of this major dinosaur group anywhere in the world.
Stegosaurs are known for their distinctive diamond-shaped back plates, while Skye is one of the few places in the world where fossils from the Middle Jurassic period can be found.
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.”
The discovery was made on the site at Brothers’ Point – called Rubha nam Brathairean in Gaelic.
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