An Corran Beach

Just around the corner from Staffin Bay is the pleasant, but largely unremarkable little sandy beach of An Corran. Up until relatively recently the beach was largely overlooked, that was until 2002 when a discovery was made…

Back then local dog walkers spotted some tracks in the rocks. These turned out to be dinosaur footprints dating back 170 million years to Jurassic times. Dinosaur experts later found more fossil tracks from larger dinosaurs, possibly from a large carnivore such as megalosaurus.

These are not the only signs of dinosaurs to have been discovered on Skye. Other species such as stegosaurus, cetiosaurus and coelophysis have all been linked to the island. Such has been the interest in Skye’s prehistoric inhabitants that there is now a dinosaur museum in Staffin. 

The best time to see the footprints is from mid to low tide. It’s also worth noting they may be covered by seaweed so you might need to poke around a little to find them. Watch out though, it’s slippery.

Given the excitement about the dinosaur footprints at An Corran it does tend to get quite busy.