Scotland’s Jurassic Park
The first fossil dinosaur reported from Scotland was a single footprint found on the Isle of Skye in the 1980s. Join Professor Brusatte to explore dinosaurs, pterodactyls, and other fossils from the Hebrides.
Around 170 million years ago, during the Jurassic Period, Scotland was part of a small island with a subtropical climate, teeming with dinosaurs and other now-extinct species. The first fossil dinosaur reported from Scotland was a single footprint found on the Isle of Skye in the 1980s.
Since then, collaborative teams of scientists from Scottish universities and museums have worked together with locals and the Staffin Museum on the Isle of Skye to discover and describe a wealth of new fossils that reveal the ancient menagerie that once called Scotland home.
At this family-friendly event, learn all about these new discoveries from Professor Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh, who has conducted much of this research and written about it in his bestselling books The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and The Rise and Reign of the Mammals.
Among these finds are:
- a ‘dinosaur disco’ tracksite with over 100 footprints and handprints made by long-necked sauropods as large as three elephants put together;
- bones and footprints of meat-eating theropods that were early cousins of T. rex and Velociraptor;
- footprints of plate-backed stegosaur dinosaurs;
- bones of fierce long-snouted and long-necked reptiles that ruled the waves offshore;
- and, most recently, the gorgeously preserved skeleton of a flying reptile called a pterosaur (pterodactyl) with a 2.5-meter wingspan, which was named as a new species, one of the few ever with a Gaelic epithet: Dearc sgiathanach.
All are welcome to join this family-friendly talk in person at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig in the Isle of Skye or online.
SPEAKER
Professor Steve Brusatte
Professor of Palaeontology and Evolution, University of Edinburgh
Steve Brusatte, PhD, is an American paleontologist who teaches at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. He is a specialist on the anatomy, genealogy, and evolution of dinosaurs, and for a decade has led fieldwork expeditions to Skye and other Hebridean islands to search for Jurassic-aged fossils. He is the author of the international bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs and The Rise and Reign of the Mammals, and was the palaeontology consultant for Jurassic World: Dominion. He has named more than 20 new species, including the tyrannosaur “Pinocchio rex” (Qianzhousaurus), the raptor Zhenyuanlong, and the Skye pterosaur (pterodactyl) Dearc.
