Scotland's 'Jurassic' fossils among world's richest

The area contains a township made up of several small settlements on the most northerly point of the Trotternish peninsula.

But it also contains the fossils of tetrapods - a group that includes dinosaurs.

Now a new scientific paper published by Cambridge University Press examines the “wealth of material” that has been found in the location.

“The Kilmaluag Formation on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, provides one of the richest Mesozoic vertebrate fossil assemblages in the UK, and is among the richest globally for Middle Jurassic tetrapods,” say the study’s authors.

“Since its discovery in 1971, this assemblage has predominantly yielded small-bodied tetrapods, including salamanders, choristoderes, lepidosaurs, turtles, crocodylomorphs, pterosaurs, dinosaurs, non-mammalian cynodonts and mammals, alongside abundant fish and invertebrates.

“It is protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest and by Nature Conservancy Order. Unlike contemporaneous localities from England, this assemblage yields associated partial skeletons, providing unprecedented new data.

“We present a comprehensive updated overview of the Kilmaluag Formation, including its geology and the fossil collections made to date, with evidence of several species occurrences presented here for the first time.

“This wealth of material reveals the Kilmaluag Formation as a vertebrate fossil assemblage of global significance, both in terms of understanding Middle Jurassic faunal composition and the completeness of specimens, with implications for the early evolutionary histories of mammals, squamates and amphibians.”

Often the target of poachers, dinosaur sites on Skye were last year given official protection.

Internationally-recognised Jurassic locations on the island, containing rare evidence of how dinosaurs and early mammals lived many millions of years ago, were granted greater vital legal status.

Minister for Rural Affairs and the Natural Environment, Mairi Gougeon, signed a Nature Conservation Order (NCO) at Staffin Museum, home of dinosaur bones and footprints found nearby.

The key aim of the NCO is to prevent rare vertebrate fossils from being damaged through irresponsible collection and removal from Skye’s globally important fossil sites.

Importantly, the NCO aims to encourage local people and the wider public to take an interest in and report any potentially important fossil finds.

In the past, important fossil discoveries have been damaged by hammering, with specimens taken from the island and moved to private collections.

In 2016 an attempt to take a plaster cast of a dinosaur footprint at An Corran risked significant damage to a feature that has become an important tourist attraction.

Known as the Dinosaur capital of Scotland, the rich Middle Jurassic fossil fauna of Skye is gradually being revealed with new discoveries continuing to be made.

These include some of the first fossil evidence of dinosaur parenting.

Housed at Staffin Museum, a rock slab shows the footprints of baby dinosaurs, together with the print of an adult. It is also believed that Skye is also home to fossil remains of flying reptiles.

SNH geologist, Colin MacFadyen said last year:“The NCO covers areas of coastline where 165 million year old Middle Jurassic sedimentary rocks are gradually being eroded by the sea. It is crucial that the footprints and actual skeletal remains of dinosaurs and other vertebrates, that are being revealed by nature are protected. These fabulous fossil finds can help answer crucial questions about ancient ecosystems and pave the way for exciting advances in our understanding of vertebrate evolution.”

The fossil remains of dinosaurs on Skye were first identified in 1984. Since then there has been a steady stream of discovery of rare trace fossils.

Incredibly rare mammalian fossils at Elgol represent another aspect of Skye’s Middle Jurassic vertebrate fossil heritage.

Experts also say they believe footprints they have found on the isle could belong to an animal as big as a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Archaeologists estimate footprints at An Corran date back 165 million years and are believed to have been left by herbivorous creatures which walked on two legs.

The tracks, a popular tourist attraction on Skye, are thought to have been made by primitive sauropods - distant relatives of brontosaurus and diplodocus - weighing more than 10 tonnes each.

They would have been formed by hundreds of dinosaurs traipsing across the landscape over the course of thousands of years.

But fossils have come under threat from rogue collectors.

In 2011, tonnes of rock were disturbed at a Jurassic site in what has been described as one of Scotland’s most reckless acts of fossil collecting.

Rock was dug away from cliffs near Bearreraig Bay in an apparent organised search for valuable specimens.