Dinosaur prints make an impression on islanders

Scientists fear that "unique" dinosaur tracks left on a Scottish beach 165 million years ago will not survive much longer.

Sixteen sets of fossilised tracks, each about 20in long and made up of three huge toes in an arrow-head formation, were discovered on a loose slab of rock at Staffin on Skye by a woman walking her dog.

A team from the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow believe they were made by a megalosaurus from the Jurassic period. The fierce 33ft-tall carnivore was once common in the British isles at a time when the rocky beach at Skye would have resembled more of a flat Mediterranean sand dune bordering a warm water lake.

It is likely that the tracks were preserved because they were covered by a fine layer of sand. But Dr Neil Clark, who is leading the Glasgow team, warned that they wouldn't survive much longer because they are on a beach that is battered by winter storms.

The fossil experts are spending three days making plaster casts of the prints so that copies may be put on public display at the island's Staffin museum, the Hunterian Museum and the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh."These are the best ever," said Dugald Ross of the Staffin Museum. "By finding so many prints together we can work out the size of the animals and the speed they were walking at. This one was big."

Paul Kelbie