A THREE-TOED dinosaur which once roamed the Isle of Skye may have been the same species as one whose prints have been found in the Red Gulch mountains in Wyoming, paleontologists said yesterday.
The 170 million-year-old tracks are so similar that Glasgow paleontologist Neil Clark believes the Wyoming dinosaurs may have swum or waded over to Skye – which at that time was part of an island off the east coast of America.
US scientists now pl
an to put his theories to the test, using 3D mapping technology to compare both sets of footprints.
Dr Clark, Curator of Paleontology at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, said: "The fact that the footprints in Wyoming and the ones in Scotland are so similar suggest that they may have been produced by a very similar kind of dinosaur, if not the same species. It is just a case of comparing them to see if they match."
Many of the dinosaur prints on Skye were discovered in the 1980s when cliffs crumbled into the sea. The prints in Wyoming were found in 1997, along the shoreline of what would have been the Sundance Sea.
Using the evidence of the footprints, which are between one and eight inches long, Dr Clark believes the tracks were made by a two-legged therapod which would have been around two metres long and around one metre high.
"There really is a paucity of specimens from the middle Jurassic period – which is why we know so little about it," he said. "There are a number of different kinds of animal that could have produced a similar kind of footprint. We don't have any other specimens so we can't give it a name."
Dr Clark said he was delighted scientists in Wyoming were to test his theory that the inhabitants of Skye and Red Gulch may have migrated across the continent and waded or swum across to Skye. At that time Scotland and Wyoming were 2,500 miles apart, rather than 4,500 miles distant as they are today.
"I don't mind if they prove I'm right or they disprove the theory, but it is always good to see the advancement of our knowledge," he said.
Brent Breithaupt, head of the Geological Museum at the University of Wyoming, said the 3D imaging techniques will make minute comparisons of the dimensions of both sets of prints.
The new technology uses overlapping photographs to construct 3D images which can then be measured and compared in detail.
Dr Breithaupt said: "The tracks are similar, that's what we know. It more than likely indicates similar types of dinosaurs living at higher latitudes at some point in time.
"Tracks can be looked at in three dimensions on computer screens and can be rotated around by various researchers and can be compared."
He and fellow researcher Neffra Matthews travelled to the west coast to take photographs of the tracks found on Skye, which is the only place in Scotland where dinosaur remains have been found.
Dr Breithaupt said that comparing data would help scientists discover more about the mid-Jurassic period.
"What we hope will eventually happen is that there will be this huge virtual archive that can be shared worldwide," he said.
The full article contains 553 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
