Larry Lu

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Footprints show giant carnivorous dinosaurs and their plant-eating prey drank from same Scottish watering hole
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Tyrannosaurus rex ancestors and their plant-eating dinosaur prey would have congregated to drink water from a lagoon in what is now Scotland, new research suggests.

Despite the fact that the carnivorous megalosaurs would have hunted the long-necked sauropods 167 million years ago, newly identified footprints show that both types of dinosaur would have milled around the edge of the lagoon, much like how modern-day animals congregate at watering holes, researchers from the University of Edinburgh say.

Lead study author Tone Blakesley, a Masters graduate at the Scottish university, told CNN that he was among a small group that recognized an initial three footprints at the remote site on the Isle of Skye’s Trotternish Peninsula in 2019.
“It was very exciting,” said Blakesley, who went on to document a total 131 footprints for the study, using a drone to take thousands of overlapping images of the site before producing digital 3D models of the footprints using specialist software.

Because of their flatness, the footprints had previously been mistaken for fish resting burrows. Blakesley explained that this was due to the fact that there would have only been a thin layer of sand on top of a much harder layer of mud, leaving only a shallow indentation.

They are preserved in “exquisite detail,” he added.

The footprints were made 167 million years ago, during the Middle Jurassic period, an important time in dinosaur evolution, but little rock remains from the era, Blakesley said.

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Larry Lu

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