Dinosaur tracks uncovered at site of Bonnie Prince Charlie's refuge
When Bonnie Prince Charlie fled the Scottish Highlands after defeat at the Battle of Culloden, his route may have crossed the fossilised footsteps of massive meat-eating dinosaurs, researchers say.
Newly discovered impressions at Prince Charles's Point on the Isle of Skye, where the Young Pretender is said to have hunkered down in 1746, reveal that megalosaurs, the carnivorous ancestors of the T rex, and enormous plant-eating sauropods gathered at the site when it was a shallow freshwater lagoon.
Researchers analysed 131 fossilised footprints at the boulder-strewn shore and reconstructed the tracks the animals made across the landscape 167m years ago. Overlapping tracks suggest that the dinosaurs drank at the lagoon at about the same time.
'The footprints are mostly worn, but there are some fantastic examples that preserve really exquisite features which showcase these dinosaurs to the max,' said Tone Blakesley, the research lead on the project at the University of Edinburgh. 'It's surprising they haven't been found until now.'
The most striking footprints are about 45cm long and belong to the three-toed megalosaur, a mid-Jurassic predator that sported sharp, curved claws. The sauropod footprints, which are round and slightly larger, had previously been mistaken for fish resting burrows.
Using a drone, the scientists took thousands of overlapping images of the shoreline bordering the remote bay on the Trotternish peninsula. These were processed to reconstruct digital 3D models of the footprints. Their report is published in Plos One.
'Rocks that date to the mid-Jurassic are very rare, which is annoying for us researchers because this was a time when dinosaurs were rapidly evolving into a variety of forms,' Blakesley said. 'When we find dinosaur footprint sites like Prince Charles's Point, we can look at how these dinosaurs interacted with their environment and how they were distributed as well.'
The footprints were created as the dinosaurs ambled through the shallow water lagoon. Over millions of years, the prints became preserved in the vast, rippled sandstone platform that stretches out to sea today.
'It looks like someone has pressed the pause button,' said Blakesley. 'It's a surreal feeling to see these footprints with my own eyes, to be able to put my hand in the sole of these footprints. You close your eyes and the tides wash back and you are in the mid-Jurassic. It's a spine-tingling feeling.'
Researchers discovered the first tracks at the site five years ago, but it has taken successive trips to uncover the full extent of the impressions preserved in the rock. On one recent visit, the team found what appeared to be a theropod footprint inside a sauropod trackway, suggesting the predator was walking in the larger beast's footsteps. 'There are definitely more footprints to be found,' said Blakesley.
'It boggles my mind to think that when Bonnie Prince Charlie was being pursued by English troops, he might have been following the footprints of dinosaurs to safety on Skye,' said Steve Brusatte, a professor of palaeontology and evolution at Edinburgh. 'He wouldn't have known what a dinosaur was, as the word hadn't been invented then, and of course he had many other more pressing things on his mind, but I do wonder if he looked down and saw these big holes in the rock with finger and toe impressions and wondered what they might be.'
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