‘Important’ Dinosaur Tracks Found in Scotland Suggest Carnivores and Their Prey Drank From the Same Watering Hole
Researchers analyzed 131 fossilized impressions on the Isle of Skye, some of which were previously considered fish burrows
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Roughly 167 million years ago, carnivorous dinosaurs and their prey shared space as they drank from the same lagoon on Scotland’s Isle of Skye, fossilized footprints suggest.
Geologists had been aware of curious imprints etched into the ground at Prince Charles’s Point on the northern part of the island, but they assumed the flat structures were fish resting burrows. In 2019, however, Tone Blakesley, then a graduate student at the University of Edinburgh, found a three-toed dinosaur footprint preserved in the sandstone.
“It was slightly raised and looked weathered, but it was really crisp and sharp,” says Blakesley to Vivian Ho at the Washington Post. “You could see the toes, the claw marks.”
Along with a small group of colleagues, he examined three total tracks at the time. Now, Blakesley and a team of researchers have analyzed 131 fossilized footprints at the site and created a three-dimensional map of the Middle Jurassic trackways. Their findings were published in the journal PLOS One on April 2.
“The footprints are mostly worn, but there are some fantastic examples that preserve really exquisite features, which showcase these dinosaurs to the max,” Blakesley adds to Ian Sample at the Guardian. “It’s surprising they haven’t been found until now.”
The tracks belonged to three-toed, meat-eating theropods, which were about the size of a Jeep, and their plant-eating sauropod prey, or “big lumbering giants, which would have plodded along,” as Blakesley tells CNN’s Jack Guy.
Scientists didn’t find any evidence to suggest the theropods were pursuing the herbivores, but rather, it seems they were meandering around the watering hole. Some of the tracks overlap, which indicates the creatures used the site around the same time.
The footprints tell researchers a lot about the dinosaurs that walked there. “It looks like someone has pressed the pause button,” Blakesley says to the Guardian. “It’s a surreal feeling to see these footprints with my own eyes, to be able to put my hand in the sole of these footprints. You close your eyes, and the tides wash back and you are in the mid-Jurassic. It’s a spine-tingling feeling.”
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Paleontologists see the Middle Jurassic (around 164 million to 174 million years ago) as a key time in dinosaur evolution—during this era, the super-sized reptiles were rapidly changing. But they don’t know too much about it, because rocks from this period are rare. That makes the newly identified footprints extra valuable for understanding dinosaurs’ lives, researchers say.
“They are really important, because they represent fossilized behavior,” adds Mike Benton, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol in England who was not involved in the study, to the Washington Post. “In other words, each example shows us exactly what a dinosaur was doing so many million years ago.”
As for whether the prey species got close to the meat-eating dinosaurs during their water breaks? “That would be a disaster for the sauropods if that happened,” Blakesley tells CNN. They likely kept their distance from the predators. “The temptation for lunch… would have been too much for the theropods.”
