A FOSSIL first spotted in a Scottish island over 50 years ago has finally been extracted from the base of the cliff where it was found and, following analysis, formally identified as a Jurassic dinosaur.
The fossil was first discovered in Skye in 1973, making it Scotland’s earliest recorded dinosaur find.
It was not fully identified at the time and remained uncollected until a team led by Dr Elsa Panciroli returned in 2018 to the location near Elgol, in the south of the island, to undertake a challenging extraction from the rock.
While the Elgol dinosaur is preserved only in fragments compared to some specimens found elsewhere, researchers have identified part of the spine, ribs and hip bones, making it the most complete dinosaur skeleton found to date in Scotland.
Close study of these bones has led researchers to believe that it is an ornithopod dinosaur, a group of which includes notable later dinosaurs such as Iguanodon, Parasaurolophus and Edmontosaurus.
The Elgol dinosaur dates to around 166 million years ago, in the Middle Jurassic, making it one of the earliest known ornithipod body fossils, as that group of dinosaurs became far more prominent in the later Cretaceous period.
Analysis of the bone structure indicates that the animal, which would have been roughly the size of a pony, was at least 8 years old.
The new description of the Elgol dinosaur is published in the Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Lead author, Dr Elsa Panciroli (above), the NERC independent research fellow at National Museums Scotland said: “This was a really challenging extraction, in fact we’d previously felt it was too difficult to collect the fossil, but I thought it was really important to study it. I was able to persuade the team to give it a try. It took a lot of hard work from a lot of people, but we did it: finally we can confirm and publish Scotland’s first recorded and most complete dinosaur, and that makes it all worthwhile.”
The difficult excavation was made possible with the support of a specialist team from Research Casting International, based in Canada. A local crew from Elgol’s Bella Jane Boat Trips piloted the rigid inflatable boat and dinghy to the shore at the foot of the cliff, where the specimen was loaded and taken back to port.
Dr Stig Walsh from National Museums Scotland added: “This is a wonderful addition to the rapidly growing set of Jurassic finds from the Isle of Skye which are enabling us to learn more and more about the rich ecosystem of the time. We’ve known there were dinosaurs there for a while, most obviously from the famous footprints at An Corran, Brother’s Point and Duntulm and from individual bones, but it’s exciting to see a more complete, if still partial, skeleton. We’re delighted to add it to the other amazing finds now in the National Collection”.
Other recent Jurassic discoveries from Skye include the description of adult and juvenile mammals of the same species, Krusatodon, which revealed that these mammals grew more slowly than mammals today, and the world’s largest Jurassic pterosaur fossil, Dearc sgiathanach.
