Footprints reveal ancient playground for giant Jurassic dinosaurs

The Isle of Skye is known for its rugged cliffs, sweeping shorelines, and traces of ancient life. It was also once home to massive dinosaurs, roaming and playing and leaving their footprints behind in lagoonal sands.

Thanks to a new discovery, we now know even more about these prehistoric wanderers and the ancient world they inhabited.

A team of researchers, led by Tone Blakesley from the University of Edinburgh, has uncovered a stunning collection of 131 fossilized footprints.

These tracks, preserved at a site called Prince Charles’s Point, reveal the quiet activity of dinosaurs over 167 million years ago.

For paleontologists, it’s a window into a time and place that is rarely captured in such detail.

Dinosaur footprints show ancient lagoon life

These footprints come from the Middle Jurassic period, a time of significant evolutionary change. Dinosaurs had diversified, and new body plans were emerging across the globe.

Yet fossil evidence from this era remains rare. The Isle of Skye stands out as one of the few places offering such rich Middle Jurassic traces.

The tracks were left in a subtropical lagoon environment, once filled with shallow water and lined with soft, rippled sand.

The site is now part of an intertidal zone, where erosion helped expose these long-hidden marks. Wind, tide, and sediment had conspired to protect them for millions of years.

Researchers used drones to document the site in detail, mapping trackways across multiple layers of sediment. Their analysis identified patterns in the size, shape, and direction of the tracks.

The footprints range from 25 to 60 centimeters in length (about 10 to 24 inches), and they fall into distinct types that correspond with different kinds of dinosaurs.

Theropods on the move

Many of the footprints belonged to theropods – meat-eating dinosaurs that walked on two legs. These include morphotype-1a, a group of large, tridactyl (three-toed) tracks showing distinct toe pads and claw impressions.

These tracks likely came from Megalosaurus-sized animals, with estimated body lengths of between 5 and 7 meters (about 16 to 23 feet). The spacing between steps suggests slow, deliberate movements.

Smaller tridactyl prints, such as those made by individuals of morphotype-1d, could have come from juvenile theropods or a different species that was smaller.

These prints retain the same general structure as the larger ones but show slight variations in toe angle and pad shape. Researchers believe they could represent early members of the megalosaurid group or other similar carnivores known from U.K. fossils.

What sets this site apart is the abundance of theropod tracks compared to previous Skye discoveries. Their higher frequency suggests they may have preferred this lagoon environment or used it more frequently than previously thought.

Sauropods leave their gentle imprint

Alongside the sharper, clawed tracks of the theropods are larger, rounder impressions.

These sauropod footprints resemble massive tyre prints. The animals that made them walked on all fours, leaving both manus (front foot) and pes (rear foot) prints in rhythmic patterns.

The trackways stretch across several meters, sometimes exceeding 12 meters (39 feet) in length. These giants moved slowly and their footfalls were spaced widely apart, indicating their enormous size and weight.

The shallow depth of the impressions suggests that the substrate was soft but not waterlogged, which is perfect for preserving such traces.

Early interpretations of these prints led to debate. Some thought they might be natural depressions or made by fish activity. But the regular spacing and anatomical fit have now confirmed their origin.

These sauropod tracks likely belong to early neosauropods, such as Cetiosaurus, which is already known from nearby fossil sites.

Footprints show dinosaurs walked alone

One of the most curious aspects of the site is the apparent lack of direction.

The dinosaurs weren’t marching in herds or following a leader. Instead, their tracks crisscross and overlap, suggesting solitary movement. Researchers describe this as “milling behavior,” where animals walked aimlessly or returned repeatedly to the same location.

The trackways do not show signs of interaction. Theropods and sauropods seem to have passed through at different times.

This absence of coordinated travel supports a view of dinosaurs as more independent in their behavior, especially in these wetland settings.

The study site also lacks any prints from stegosaurs or ornithopods. This absence may reflect environmental differences or simply a preservation gap.

The idea that only sauropods and theropods used this lagoon is plausible, but more evidence is needed in order to be sure.

Historical and ecological importance

The researchers highlight a compelling overlap between historical significance and dinosaur footprints. Prince Charles’s Point is not only a rich fossil bed but also a key location in Scottish history.

“The footprints at Prince Charles’s Point provide fascinating insight into the behaviors and environmental distributions of meat-eating theropods and plant-eating, long-necked sauropods during an important time in their evolution,“ Tone Blakesley and colleagues noted.

“On Skye, these dinosaurs clearly preferred shallowly submerged lagoonal environments over subaerially exposed mudflats. Intriguingly, the site also has some historical significance, as a place on Skye where Bonnie Prince Charlie landed and hid during his flight across Scotland following the Battle of Culloden.”

This dual legacy – one of fleeing royalty and ancient reptiles – gives the site a rare kind of depth. The stone remembers more than one kind of footstep.

Drone technology and sediment clues

Drone imaging played a crucial role in documenting the site. It allowed scientists to trace the orientation and depth of trackways from above.

The aerial view revealed patterns that might have gone unnoticed from ground level. When the patterns were combined with on-site sediment analysis, the team could interpret how these footprints were formed and preserved.

Ripple marks across the site show the influence of water currents. However, dinosaur movements didn’t follow these ripples. That means the animals weren’t swimming or walking along shorelines.

Instead, they wandered freely, and were unaffected by the flow. This supports the idea that they used the area casually rather than for migration or feeding.

The sediment itself offers more insight. Layers above the footprints contain finer material, suggesting occasional floods or rising tides. These conditions helped seal and protect the prints from erosion, locking their shapes in time.

Film features the dinosaur footprints

To bring the discovery to life, Tone Blakesley produced a feature-length documentary. The film explores how the site was found, what the footprints reveal, and why they matter.

It captures the beauty of the Isle of Skye and the precision of scientific fieldwork. You can watch the documentary here.

This find doesn’t just inform our understanding of dinosaur movement. It adds texture to a global picture of Middle Jurassic life.

In a period where skeletal fossils remain rare, footprints tell a living story of ancient Scotland – one muddy step at a time.

The study is published in the journal PLOS One.

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