Skye Dinosaurs
Driving back across the Isle, we set off in search of an ultimate nerd dream – dinosaurs. If Skye wasn’t cool enough already, I recently discovered it is interestingly (if unimaginatively) referred to as Scotland’s Jurassic Island due to the huge deposits of Jurassic fossils that are found here.
Dinosaur Bay, Score Bay Isle of Skye
Yes this includes bones of dinosaurs (!), and beaches filled with fossiliferous rocks of shallow Jurassic ocean animals and plants for responsible collecting, but this weekend’s plan was to find the in-situ sites of dinosaur footprints.
In the Jurassic sedimentary plateau that becomes accessible at low tide at Score Bay, near Duntulm, is the largest dinosaur trackway in Scotland.
Find-a-Print, Score Bay Isle of Skye
While we had little luck at the more popular Staffin Bay site, to our nerdy, squealing delight we managed to find the famed ‘dinosaur disco’.
170 million years ago MANY different species of sauropods were wading here through a shallow swamp, and by the shear luck that exists to create any fossil, these footprints were cemented in time.
Dinosaur Disco, Score Bay Isle of Skye
The footprints could be mistaken for a series of circular rockpools (explaining why they were only discovered in 2015), but like solving a riddle, the stepped trackways are obvious once you find them.
Rockpool Prints
Dinosaur Footprints, Score Bay Isle of Skye
The literal toeprints in some of the cast prints help to confirm our find, and in that moment we are both David and Richard Attenborough, discovering and dramatising Jurassic Skye.
Dino Print, Score Bay Isle of Skye
Admiring the rockpool communities of tiny seaweed and molluscs thriving in the spaces created by giant dinosaurs that walked here 170 MILLION YEARS before them, is in the top 10 most special experiences of my life. Day, week and month absolutely made.
