POLICE are investigating after a set of 165-million-year-old dinosaur footprints were damaged on Skye.

Officers say a man with a campervan poured plaster into two prints on Staffin beach.

They have now appealed for information to find the person responsible for causing the damage, said to have been caused on December 28.

The prints, a popular tourist attraction on Skye, are believed to have been made by a large carnivore similar to a Megalosaurus.

They were first discovered by local couple Cathie and Paul Booth in 2002.

Mrs Booth was walking her dog along the beach near her Staffin home when a piece of loose sandstone, dislodged by recent winter storms, caught her eye. It had a clear three-toed print embedded in it. 

When she took the rock home to show her husband, Mr Booth returned to the beach and uncovered 15 other fossilised remains, believed to be the oldest and largest dinosaur footprints found in Scotland.

Skye has long been known as Scotland's Jurassic isle due to the large number of dinosaur remains uncovered there, but these prints are significant because they are the first dinosaur remains to be found still held in the rocks in the place in which they were formed. 

Anyone with information relating to the damage to the dinosaur footprints is asked to contact Lochaber and Skye police via 101.