Fossils in the Highlands and Islands

The fossils from this region are as diverse as its landscape.

Almost every collection holds some form of fish from the Middle Devonian, such as predatory spiny sharks, eel-like Palaeospondylus and robust species of lungfish, notably at Stromness Museum and Hugh Miller’s Birthplace Cottage and Museum in Cromarty. These inhabited a lake and river system in an otherwise barren, desert landscape extending from Moray toward Shetland.

From one extreme to another, mollusc fossils in Pleistocene Arctic Clays in the collection of Bute Museum are evidence of a warming climate across Scotland following glaciation 15,000 years ago.

Fossils from the Isle of Skye give us a rare glimpse of a Middle Jurassic ecosystem with the first evidence and actual bones of a dinosaur in Scotland in the collection of Staffin Dinosaur Museum, complemented by Jurassic marine reptile, ammonite and plant fossils from the east coast seen in Dunrobin Castle Museum and Brora Heritage Centre.