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A group of paleontologists discovered a large, well-preserved pterosaur on a rocky beach off the coast of Scotland. Boasting roughly an 8-foot wingspan, the ancient reptile is the largest of its kind to be found from the Jurassic Period. The animal’s existence was a chance find made in 2017, when paleontologist Amelia Penney stumbled across the creature’s head while photographing dinosaur footprints on a rocky beach on the Isle of Skye. The pterosaur was promptly sawed out of the rock (with a couple pauses to deal with the tides, which threatened to wash away the fossil) and exhaustively studied; the...

Gigantic dinosaurs frolicked and splashed some 170 million years ago in the lagoons of what is now Scotland. That’s what a team of paleontologists has determined after discovering dozens of jumbo-sized footprints belonging to long-necked sauropods on the Isle of Skye. Mixed with the herbivores’ tracks were a few clawed impressions left behind by two-legged meat-eaters known as theropods. The footprints present a snapshot of life during an important period in dinosaur history that has yielded relatively few fossil remains. In the mid-Jurassic, sauropods necks grew longer and the first birds were figuring out flight.Identifying two types of footprints in...

Geologists exploring volcanic rocks on Scotland's Isle of Skye have found ejecta from a previously unknown, 60 million-year-old meteorite impact. The discovery, the first meteorite impact described within the British Paleogene Igneous Province (BPIP), raises questions about the impact and its possible connection to Paleogene volcanic activity across the North Atlantic. Simon Drake, an associate lecturer in geology at Birkbeck University of London, zeroed in on a meter-thick layer at the base of a 60.0 million-year-old lava flow. "We thought it was an ignimbrite (a volcanic flow deposit)," said Drake. However, when researchers analysed the rock using an electron microprobe,...

The new James Bond movie will reportedly shoot its finale at Scotland's Duntrune Castle. The building, situated 95 miles from Glasgow near Lochgilphead in Argyll, will double as 007's ancestral home and be the location for his final showdown with the movie's villains