Stegosaur footprints found on Skye

Among them was a short sequence of triangular prints left by a stegosaur as it ambled across a mudflat on the edge of what was a shallow lagoon around 170 million years ago.

While stegosaurs could grow to almost 30 feet long and weigh more than six tonnes, these prints belonged to a young animal or small-bodied member of the stegosaur family.

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The “grapefruit-sized” prints suggest the herbivorous animal was around the size of a cow, although the distinctive diamond shaped plates along its back would have made it appear bigger.

The discovery means that the site is now recognised as one of the oldest-known fossil records of this major dinosaur group found anywhere in the world.

The team of palaeontologists from the University of Edinburgh also found other prints, which show that dinosaurs on Skye were more diverse than previously thought.

Skye is the only place in Scotland and one of the few places in the world where fossils from the Middle Jurassic period -- around 174-164 million years ago -- can be found.

Previous discoveries 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.

The Skye stegosaur was a predecessor of the iconic “stegosaurus”, a specific species that lived in North America around 20 million years later.

Dr Steve Brusatte, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences, who led the field team, said: “This animal was one of the first members of the stegosaur family and would have looked very similar to the stegosaurus, although smaller at around the size of a cow, albeit a bit more imposing.

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“It was recognised by the ‘Deltapodus’ footprints -- the delta or triangular shape of the track which is the signature of stegosaurs. One possibility is it was a juvenile and it would have got bigger as an adult; the other possibility is it was a very primitive full-grown stegosaur and the family started out at a smaller size.

“Only by discovering more fossils will be able to figure it out. It’s very exciting -- now we want to find the bones of stegosaurs and hopefully we will find some of those on Skye before too long.”

He added: “Our findings give us a much clearer picture of the dinosaurs that lived in Scotland 170 million years ago.

“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.”

It was announced last year that dinosaur sites on Scotland’s “Dinosaur Isle” are to be given official legal protection.

A Nature Conservation Order aims to prevent rare vertebrate fossils from being damaged through irresponsible collection and removal from Skye’s globally important fossil sites.

It also aims to encourage local people and the wider public to take an interest inand report any potentially important fossil finds.

Brothers’ Point is near to where the first dinosaur footprint in Scotland was found in the 1980s. Although this part of the coast has been prospected by paleontologists for almost 50 years, the newly discovered tracksite was not recognised until the spring storms of 2017 moved boulders along the beach and left the prints exposed.

Paige dePolo, a PhD student in the 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."