Sauropods from the Isle of Skye Scotland coloring pages

 Welcome to my free coloring pages blog. 

The new drawing today is of a Sauropod from Scotland.

Sauropod from the Isle of Skye

Sauropods were the largest type of animal to ever walk on land.  In 2015 a pair of paleontologists from the University of Edinburgh discovered hundreds of Sauropod footprints on the edge of the sea on the Isle of Skye, Scotland.  The impressions in the rock look like tide pools at first glance, but they are large dinosaur footprints.  

So, it is thought that 170 million years ago some Sauropods walked in the shallows of an ocean lagoon.  The footprints are up to 70 cm across so the dinosaurs are estimated to be around 49 feet or 15 meters long.  We know that Sauropods were land animals so perhaps they went into the ocean to cool off.  Maybe they were chased into the ocean by predators.  Maybe they just liked wading in shallow water.  Another possibility is maybe they waded into the seawater to help remove parasites from their skin.   

The paleontologists that found these footprints are named Stephan Brusatte and Tom Challands.  I am currently listening to a book by Stephan Brusatte called The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs.   It is a REALLY good book and I learned about this discovery today while listening to his book.  

My drawing today is of only ONE Sauropod but these footprints were made by a herd of Sauropods and the footprints included front and back feet.  The Pterosaurs in the sky are Rhamphorynchus.  This long-tailed animal was NOT a dinosaur. It was a flying reptile or Pterosaur.  It has a wingspan of around 3 feet or about 1.8 meters wide.  It had a mouthful of sharp teeth for catching fish.  Rhamphorhyncchus lived just before the Sauropod footprints were made, so maybe they should not be included, but they did live close to the right time period.  The oldest known Pterosaur lived 163 million years ago and the Sauropod footprints were from 170 million years ago. 

The older drawing down below is from a previous post.  Notice that the dinosaurs are drawn differently.  Today's drawing is more of a Diplodocus type Sauropod and the older drawing is more of a Apatosaur type Sauropod.  We actually don't know for sure what the Sauropods in Scotland looked like biecasue we only have footprints.  

NOTE:  This top drawing, in printable form, is found by clicking on the "Paleontology" button and scrolling down to the bottom of the Mesozoic Life section.  When you click on the title you will see the printable page.  Below is a drawing done a while back of these Sauropods from Scotland.  This drawing will be further up the list of printables.  Have fun coloring.