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By Hannah Cease
Dinosaurs on Skye
This summer, I found myself standing on the windswept coast of the Isle of Skye, staring at footprints left not by people, but by dinosaurs. I love dinosaurs and it has been a life goal of mine to see footprints like these in person my whole life, and here on the coast of the Isle of Skye, they stared back at me.
The Isle of Skye is unique in that it is one of the only places in Scotland where dinosaur fossils can be found, the truth is much of Scotland is far too old for dinosaur fossils. Scotland's geological history is incredibly ancient, in fact it is much older than the age of dinosaurs. Large parts of the Highlands are built from Precambrian and early Paleozoic rocks, formed hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs ever walked the earth. During the time when dinosaurs lived (roughly 230-66 million years ago), much of Scotland wasn't accumulating the kinds of sediments such mud, sand, and floodplain deposits that preserve fossils. Instead, Scotland went through long periods of erosion, mountain uplift, and volcanic activity. Any sediments that did form often didn't survive later geological processes which means no fossils were preserved through til present day. Skye is different though, along its coasts, especially near Staffin and Brothers' Point, lie layers of sedimentary rock from the Middle Jurassic, about 170 million years ago. This period is incredibly rare in the fossil record worldwide because of how few places have preserved rocks from this time. Skye, however, was positioned along an ancient rift system where sediments collected in lagoons, floodplains, and shallow coastal environments. These soft muds and sands later hardened into rock, locking in footprints, trackways, and occasional bones. Skye was doubly unique as because it also wasn't buried too deeply, metamorphosed, or destroyed by later mountain building, these Jurassic layers survived and are now present along the top layer of the shoreline.
This rare pocket in Skye preserved a part of history that we hardly see anywhere else. Many species of sauropod and theropod dinosaurs fossils and prints are present, including megalosaurus, stegosaurus, and primitive duck-billed dinosaurs as well as newly found pterosaur fossils. Predatory dinosaurs that are early relatives of later species like Allosaurus also left three-toed prints that look like oversized bird tracks. If you go today you can see these tracks and the stories they tell, just make sure you don't make the same mistake I did and go at low tide for the best experience.
Hannah is a McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville in the class of 2026. She is studying biology on the ecology track and political science.
