Jurassic Period sauropods apparently inhabited what was a sandy saltwater lagoon on the present-day Isle of Skye in Scotland.
Published in the Scottish Journal of Geology, the new study detailed fossilized footprints of a giant plant-eater that lived during the Jurassic Period. The sauropod was likely more than 44,000 pounds and measured about 50 feet long, Discovery News reported.
"The new tracksite from Skye is one of the most remarkable dinosaur discoveries ever made in Scotland," study lead author Steve Brusatte, of the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences, said in a press release. "There are so many tracks crossing each other that it looks like a dinosaur disco preserved in stone. By following the tracks you can walk with these dinosaurs as they waded through a lagoon 170 million years ago, when Scotland was so much warmer than today."
Such large dinosaurs, like the Brontosaurus and Diplodocus relatives detailed in the study, were previously believed to stay more inland.
"Surprisingly, the new discovery shows that these big dinosaurs spent lots of time in coastal areas and shallow water," Brusatte told Discovery News. "We used to think that they were purely land-dwellers."
The site also promises to give more insight to the dinosaurs that roamed the area, as the researchers found hundreds of imprints left behind.
"This find clearly establishes the Isle of Skye as an area of major importance for research into the Mid-Jurassic period," study co-author Tom Challands, Brusatte's School of GeoSciences colleague, said in the release. "It is exhilarating to make such a discovery and being able to study it in detail, but the best thing is this is only the tip of the iceberg. I'm certain Skye will keep yielding great sites and specimens for years to come."
