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Updated: Feb 14, 2026

Testing Visual Sensitivity to the Speed and Direction of Motion in Lizards
Published on: December 14, 2006
Lizards ran bipedally 110 million years ago
Hang-Jae Lee1, Yuong-Nam Lee2, Anthony R Fiorillo3
1Geological Museum, Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, Daejeon, 34123, South Korea.
Abstract:
Four heteropod lizard trackways discovered in the Hasandong Formation (Aptian-early Albian), South Korea assigned to Sauripes hadongensis, n. ichnogen., n. ichnosp., which represents the oldest lizard tracks in the world. Most tracks are pes tracks (N = 25) that are very small, average 22.29 mm long and 12.46 mm wide. The pes tracks show "typical" lizard morphology as having curved digit imprints that progressively increase in length from digits I to IV, a smaller digit V that is separated from the other digits by a large interdigital angle. The manus track is 19.18 mm long and 19.23 mm wide, and shows a different morphology from the pes. The predominant pes tracks, the long stride length of pes, narrow trackway width, digitigrade manus and pes prints, and anteriorly oriented long axis of the fourth pedal digit indicate that these trackways were made by lizards running bipedally, suggesting that bipedality was possible early in lizard evolution.

