Photos: Dinosaurs Sloshed Around Ancient Lagoon

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Giant print

Dinosaur track

(Image credit: Jon Hoad)

Snails and limpets

Dinosaur track

(Image credit: Paige dePolo)

Snails and limpets fill the track mark of an ancient sauropod dinosaur.

These newly discovered track marks indicate that some sauropods and carnivorous, two-legged theropod dinosaurs sloshed through the shallow waters of lagoons during the Middle Jurassic.

Brothers' Point

Dinosaur track

(Image credit: Steve Brusatte)

The researchers found the dinosaur track marks at Rubha nam Brathairean, which is Gaelic for "Brothers’ Point."

The Isle of Skye is gaining a reputation for dinosaur prints. In 2015, researchers published a study about a slightly younger site on the isle that also had preserved dinosaur trackways, Live Science previously reported. This site is called Duntulm because it is near Duntulm Castle.

Wooly mammals

Dinosaur track

(Image credit: Jon Hoad)

There are quite a few sheep on the Isle of Skye, grazing not too far from the dinosaur track marks.

Carnivorous dinosaur

Dinosaur track

(Image credit: Paige dePolo)

A theropod dinosaur left this track mark about 170 million years ago.

Besides track marks, researchers have found the remains of sauropod teeth and limb bones, an armored dinosaur's partial arm bones, and theropod teeth and vertebrae on the Isle of Skye.

Rocky work

Dinosaur track

(Image credit: Shasta Marrerro)

Study lead researcher Paige dePolo, a master's student of paleontology and geobiology at the University of Edinburgh, examines the fossilized track marks at Brothers' Point.

Trackway map

Dinosaur track

(Image credit: Scottish Journal of Geology)

The researchers mapped out the roughly 50 dinosaur track marks found on the Isle of Skye.

[Read more about the dinosaur discovery here]

Laura Geggel
Laura Geggel
Managing Editor

Laura is the managing editor at Live Science. She also runs the archaeology section and the Life's Little Mysteries series. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Scholastic, Popular Science and Spectrum, a site on autism research. She has won multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association for her reporting at a weekly newspaper near Seattle. Laura holds a bachelor's degree in English literature and psychology from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in science writing from NYU.