131 Fossilized Footprints Reveal Clues About Scotland's Jurassic Period

Learn how newly-discovered dinosaur footprints on the Isle of Skye helped researchers reconstruct Scotland’s Jurassic past.

By Stephanie Edwards
Apr 3, 2025 8:40 PMApr 3, 2025 9:34 PM
Prince Charles Point reconstruction of Megalosaurus and long-necked sauropod
'A Hidden Place'. An artistic reconstruction of the tracksite in the Middle Jurassic, painted by Tone Blakesley and Scott Reid. (Image Credit: Tone Blakesley and Scott Reid, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/))

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If you close your eyes and picture dinosaurs roaming across Earth, what do you see? Probably not the cold, misty shorelines of Scotland.

Thanks to 131 footprint findings by a team at the University of Edinburgh, we can now confirm that Tyrannosaurus rex’s ancestors, and others, did indeed frequent the Scottish islands. These footprints, located at Prince Charles’s Point on the Isle of Skye, give insights into dino distribution during an important evolutionary period. 

Dinosaur Footprints and Trackways

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