First came a few individual tracks in the 1980’s. Then traces of an entire family in the early 2000’s. The year 2015 brought along the discovery of hundreds of prints. Just earlier this spring, another larger set of rare dinosaur footprints were found on the same piece of land, the a westerly Scottish island called the Isle of Skye. The prints were discovered at surface level on the island’s shores, “hiding in plain sight” for many years according to University of Southern California paleontologist Michael Habib.

 

Studying the prints gives some clues as to the intricacies of the Middle Jurassic era, a diverse and exciting piece of prehistory. It is notably the era in which dinosaurs began their domination of the planet, but little other is known. At the time that these dinosaurs lived, the Scottish Highlands were still geographically near what is North America, explaining and explained by the similarities in geological makeup and fossil records from previous eras. University of Edinburgh paleontologist Stephen Brusatte relays that the prints were made in shallow lagoon in tropic conditions, made possible since the entire area was much closer to the equator than its current 55° N. The Isle of Skye is by no means a fossil hotspot, but relative to the rest of Britain, it has a denser fossil population, providing an interesting insight unavailable in many places of the world.

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Unfortunately, the absence of bone records alongside the fossil footprints makes it so that scientists are not completely able to identify the species of dinosaurs, but the size, shape and patterns of the tracks give enough information to clue us into their lives. The most recently discovered sets include prints belong to a theropod; a meat-eating early cousin of the Tyrannosaurus rex that is estimated by Edinburgh Napier University ecologist Jason Gilchrist to be up to the size of two white rhinos, or approximately 55 average humans. The second set belongs to a long-necked sauropod, walking on all fours and consuming strictly a vegetable diet, not unlike a smaller Brontosaurus.

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Brusatte says that the records simply provide “a snapshot into a day in the life of some dinosaurs,” what he claims is a “pretty cool” bit of prehistory to be able to see firsthand so many millions of years later. For humans to be able to regularly find and decipher the mysteries held within buried archives of ancient life is a feat that goes unnoticed far too often. The astonishing matters uncovered never cease to excite and add to the scientific understanding of life on Earth as it was, is, and may be again.