Flesh-eating dinosaur's footprints unearthed on Skye

Prints from a group of coelophyses - similar to the veloceraptor featured in the film Jurassic Park - have been identified on Skye. They clearly show the dinosaur’s three-taloned toes and prove that the creatures survived into the mid-Jurassic period between 165 and 170 million years ago - making it the most recently deceased dinosaur yet discovered in Scotland.

Analysis of the stride pattern of the coelophysis has allowed Dr Neil Clark, the curator of palaeontology at Glasgow University, to identify the dinosaur which left the prints, and develop a picture of its life and habitat.

Coelophysis was a small, compact animal built for speed and agility. Its powerful rear legs and slender body made it a fast and deadly predator.

It had a long, narrow head and a mouth filled with small, sharp-edged teeth. It had a double-hinged lower jaw to saw its food, although it probably ate small animals whole.

Unlike other dinosaurs, the leg bones of coelophysis were nearly hollow, reducing its total body weight and increasing its speed.

Dr Clark said: "Coelophysis was like a small veloceraptor - a meat eater which hunted in large packs.

"They are associated with the late Triassic period (215 million years ago), but in Scotland we are clearly looking at the last vestiges of this kind of animal. The prints support the earlier find of a tail bone from mid-Jurassic Skye, which is indistinguishable from coelophysis.

"One, which left a line of three prints, was one-and-a-half metres tall and travelling at a speed of up to nine miles per hour when it walked over the soft mudflats. Its strides were around a foot apart.

"It was moving at quite a slow pace, so it was clearly not running to chase something or escape a predator. It seems to have been just sauntering along."

It seems that the species might have been capable of eating its own offspring. In 1947, adult coelophysis remains were discovered in New Mexico which contained the skeletons of their young.

At first, this was thought to be proof they may have given birth to live young, rather than laying eggs like other dinosaurs. But experts now believe coelophysis was a cannibal and occasionally ate its own hatchlings.

Dr Clark believes that there was no danger in sight for the coelophysis group which left its prints on Skye.

He said: "Other single prints nearby, including the mother and her young, suggest this was a safe territory, and that they were moving as family groups in this area.

"There were no predators around and they weren’t too bothered about what was going on around them."

The soft mudflats of the Trotternish peninsula, on the west coast of Skye, have turned to fine-grained sandstone over millions of years, due to exposure of the land by sea erosion, successive Ice Ages and movements of the Earth’s crust.

Dr Clark added: "During the Jurassic period, the Isle of Skye was a low-lying environment typified by woodland and swamps, and attached to the mainland.

"These tidal mudflats would have been really large expanses with lagoons in which small, carnivorous dinosaurs could easily scavenge fish."

The dinosaurs were cut off from the rest of Britain by mountain ranges and would have had more in common with the dinosaurs of North America, because the North Atlantic was closed at that time.

Dr Clark, who has made a number of print discoveries on Skye over ten years of researching, said that fossilised remains of the dinosaur which created them could yet be discovered in the area.

He said: "Something might turn up.

"Middle-Jurassic sites are very rare around the world, so these discoveries have opened up new possibilities for us."

The original sandstone, with the clear dinosaur prints, is currently in safe-keeping at the Staffin Museum on Skye, before being put on display to the public there.