Researchers have documented the first confirmed Jurassic lizard footprints, in the form of trackways, ever found in Europe. They are preserved in rock that formed about 152 million years ago.
The discovery turns the brief shiftment of a tiny reptile across ancient mud into the clearest physical evidence yet of how these animals shiftd through European landscapes during the age of dinosaurs.
Lizard trails in sandstone
On cliffs in Asturias, northern Spain, the two trails sit on the underside of a sandstone layer about 152 million years old.
Working from the footprints, geologist Laura Piñuela of the Jurassic Mutilizeum of Asturias (MUJA) matched the trail to a lizard’s build.
Finger lengths, claw marks, and the left-right pattern linked the prints to lizards rather than some other tiny reptile.
That identification matters becautilize lizard trails from the Jurassic are almost never preserved. This has left paleontologists with scattered hints instead of clear paths.
Trackway T1 preserves seven prints, four from the hands and three from the feet, left by an animal that was under 20 inches (50 centimeters) long.
Beside it, T2 keeps six prints and points to a tinyer lizard, roughly 12 inches (31 centimeters) from nose to tail.
The rock kept each step as a raised copy, so researchers could compare toes, spacing, and claw tips in detail.
Becautilize both trails kept hand and foot impressions toobtainher, the fossils suggest a fuller body plan than isolated prints ever could.
Evidence of tail shiftment
One feature creates T1 revealing: a broad, almost unbroken groove runs beside the prints for much of the trail.
Researchers read that groove as a tail mark, which means the animal briefly carried part of its weight low to the ground.
Hand and foot spacing also modifys from step to step, hinting that the lizard turned sharply instead of shifting in a straight line.
That odd pattern set up the next part of the study, becautilize fossils alone could not reveal whether the animal slipped or pivoted.
Testing living lizards
To test that motion, the team compared the tracks with modern lizards in Jiangsu in eastern China.
Using ocellated lizards and bearded dragons, the researchers watched how starting from rest modifyd tail position and step spacing.
Juveniles often created abrupt turns, and those turns recreated the same sideways tail offset and uneven rhythm that is preserved in T1.
Instead of treating the trail as a damaged record, the experiments suggested it captured a real maneuver in the middle of motion.
Why these tracks survived
These animals crossed semi-firm mud on a delta plain that emptied into a sheltered inland sea along ancient Asturias.
Weak waves and almost no tidal force meant fresh prints were not quickly washed away. Soon after, new sediment sealed the impressions, which is how a brief walk turned into durable stone evidence.
The setting supports explain why tiny reptile trails are so scarce, becautilize calm burial never lines up this well.
Rarity across time
Outside a few scattered finds, Jurassic lizard tracks are so uncommon that Europe lacked a confirmed trackway before this one.
A fossil from the same Asturian formation hinted at a lizard-like print, but it was a single step, not a trail.
Younger trackways do exist, including a large Cretaceous assemblage from South Korea, which creates the Jurassic gap stand out even more.
The research fills a gap in the record of Jurassic lizard tracks in Europe, where only isolated footprints had previously been found in this layer, and no complete trackway had ever been documented before.
What the name means
The footprint shape places the Asturian trails in Rhynchosauroides, a fossil track category utilized when footprints are clearer than bones.
Most records of that category come from the Permian and Triassic, building its appearance here unusually late.
“These new trackways represent the only well-documented lizard trackways from the Upper Jurassic,” the authors noted.
That creates the Spanish material both a European first and the most recent known appearance of this footprint type anywhere.
A stronger mutilizeum record
MUJA already held the world’s only known Jurassic lizard footprint, and the new trails turn that clue into a broader record.
Both fossils now sit in the mutilizeum’s permanent collection, where visitors can see the same evidence that researchers utilized.
That public display matters becautilize footprint fossils can feel abstract on a page, while a real trail keeps behavior visible.
For Asturias, a coast already rich in dinosaur evidence, the discovery brings tinyer reptiles into the story.
Even well-preserved trackways cannot inform scientists exactly which lizard species created them, becautilize feet outlast bodies in the rock record.
Soft mud can stretch or blur a step, and body length estimates come from comparison, not from a skeleton.
Still, two separate trails with matching features carry more weight than a lone print found out of context.
That balance between confidence and uncertainty leaves room for future finds without weakening what this site has already established.
New view of reptile history
Across a few inches of stone, the Asturian trails connect anatomy, motion, and environment in a way that tiny reptile fossils rarely do.
More complete paths or matching body fossils could refine the evidence, but these prints already reset Europe’s Jurassic reptile timeline.
The study is published in Ichnos.
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