RESEARCHERS have discovered that carnivorous and herbivorous dinosaurs “mingled” amongst each other 167 million years ago after finding rare footprints on the Isle of Skye.
According to newly identified tracks, despite being prehistoric predator and prey, massive meat-eating and plant-eating dinosaurs drank together from shallow freshwater lagoons on the Isle of Skye.
The 131 footprints at Prince Charles’s Point on Skye’s Trotternish Peninsula makes the site one of Scotland’s largest and rarest in the world.
The discovery, which was made five years ago by a student and staff from the University of Edinburgh, has given scientists “invaluable insights” into the environmental preferences and behaviours of dinosaurs from the Middle Jurassic period.
The site revealed footprints of plant-eating sauropods, the large, flat, circular impressions suggest they were made by a long-necked dinosaur two or three times the size of an elephant, along with a large number of footprints from carnivorous megalosaurs – cousins and ancestors of T. rex.
Experts say the area is also rich with footprints from jeep-sized megalosaurs, evidence of which from the Middle Jurassic period is scarce.
Analysis of the multi-directional tracks and walking gaits suggest that the dinosaurs on Skye “milled around” the lagoon’s margins, similar to how animals congregate around watering holes today, researchers have said.
The footprints also indicate that, regardless of dominance, the meat-eating theropods and plant-eating sauropods spent time in lagoons as opposed to exposed drier mudflats.
Tone Blakesley, research lead and Masters in Palaeontology and Geobiology graduate from the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, said the footprints have helped indicate that the dinosaurs preferred shallow submerged lagoonal environments.
He said: “The footprints at Prince Charles's Point provide a fascinating insight into the behaviours and environmental distributions of meat-eating theropods and plant-eating, long-necked sauropods during an important time in their evolution.
“On Skye, these dinosaurs clearly preferred shallowly submerged lagoonal environments over subaerially exposed mudflats."
Following the discovery of the first three footprints at Prince Charles’s Point five years ago subsequent finds have made the site one of the most extensive dinosaur track sites in Scotland, with scientists expecting to find more.
The research team took thousands of overlapping photographs of the entire site with a drone and used specialist software to reconstruct digital 3D models of the footprints via a method called photogrammetry.
The bay on the Trotternish Peninsula was also the hiding place for Bonnie Prince Charlie (above), who sought shelter on the shoreline on June 21, 1746 with Flora MacDonald while being pursued by British troops.
Steve Brusatte, Personal Chair of Palaeontology and Evolution from the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, said it is astounding to think that Bonnie Prince Charlie could have been sprinting in the footsteps of dinosaurs.
He said: "Prince Charles’s Point is a place where Scottish history and prehistory blend together.
“It’s astounding to think that when Bonnie Prince Charlie was running for his life, he might have been sprinting in the footsteps of dinosaurs.”
The research, published in PLOS One, was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and National Geographic Society.
Click here to watch a feature-length documentary summarising the research.
