The successful quest to find a species last seen more than 50 years ago has added to the urgency of protecting the vanishing grassland habitat of a lizard that had been feared extinct.
Researchers have found an armoured fossil skink 1,000 times heavier than the ones in your garden. Its closest living relative is the shingleback lizard.
Lizards that do or do not share space with invasive fire ants will react differently to this scenario.
Tracy Langkilde and Travis Robbins
The ways eastern fence lizards have changed in response to red imported fire ants demonstrate how species can adapt to survive the presence of invasive predators.
Researchers wanted to understand what happens when chameleons – animals that display dynamic colour change – find themselves in an environment without their natural predators.
With four tiny legs and an extraordinarily long body, a fossil of the snake-like lizard Tetrapodophis amplectus has created controversy.
(Julius Csotonyi)
In 2015, a published article described the fossil of a four-legged snake. New research has revealed that it is in fact a lizard, and the fossil is the centre of a scientific ethics debate.
The sungazer lizard faces a number of threats. Could rising temperatures be among them?
Dennis W Donohue/Shutterstock
Spiny-tailed skinks, also known as meelyu, are culturally significant to the Badimia people in Western Australia. But habitat degradation and mining have put them at threat of extinction.
Leopard geckos make fun and entertaining pets.
(Shutterstock)
Reptiles get a bad rap, but this is because they’re misunderstood. Promoting healthy reptile pet ownership can contribute to conservation and education efforts.
A specimen of Proscelotes aenea collected by Loveridge in 1918 in Lumbo, Mozambique, now kept at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University.
Licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
There are too many little-understood species for scientists to study them all. A new approach helps decide which ones to tackle first.
Getting the job done. A female Asian water dragon (Physignathus cocincinus) produced a daughter (left) without the assistance of a male.
Skip Brown/Smithsonian’s National Zoo
Mercedes Burns, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Parthenogenesis, a form of reproduction in which an egg develops into an embryo without being fertilized by sperm, might be more common than you realized.
A male Agama planiceps shows off his colouring on a rock in Namibia.
Ondrej Prosicky/Shutterstock
By eliminating the less fit individuals over time, predation can drive the population to increasing fitness in terms of survival and reproductive success.