When the Mesozoic ended, it was inevitable that the lizards, snakes and amphisbaenians – the squamates – would inherit the Earth. For the last 65 million years, the world has been so dominated by squamates that we term this stage in the planet’s history the Squamozoic. What is life like, today, on Squamozoic Earth? Purely [...]

Two weeks ago I and colleagues published a new paper in the august open-access online pages of PLoS ONE. Led by Aleksandra Birn-Jeffery of the Royal Veterinary College, and co-authored by Charlotte Miller, Emily Rayfield, Dave Hone and myself, the paper is titled ‘Pedal claw curvature in birds, lizards and Mesozoic dinosaurs – complicated categories [...]

This sequence of photos – taken by my good friend Markus Bühler – shows snail-crushing behaviour in a captive individual of the Australian scincid lizard Hemisphaeriodon (read on) gerrardii, popular known as the Pink-tongued skink. Unique to the coastal eastern strip of Queensland and New South Wales, it’s a predominantly terrestrial skink of damp sclerophyll [...]

It’s still not as well known as it should be that ‘complex’ or ‘sophisticated’ bits of social behaviour are far from limited to mammals and birds among the tetrapods. Lizards, snakes, crocodiles, alligators and even humble frogs, salamanders and caecilians engage in such things as pair-bonding, parental care and kin recognition. Play behaviour (Burghardt et [...]

Notice to those who see that this article is incredibly long and then decide not to read it: here’s the take-home point… ReptileEvolution.com does not represent a trustworthy source that people should consult or rely on. Students, amateur researchers and the lay public should be strongly advised to avoid or ignore it. For the rest [...]

This is an annoying teaser for the very long article due to appear here soon: an attempt to counteract the massive web presence of the wholly misleading, mis-educational ReptileEvolution.com. And, no, Longisquama did not really look like this… alas, Dave Peters tells us that it did [the drawing shown here - produced by me - is [...]

It’s well known that monitor lizards (or varanids) sometimes practise cannibalism (that is, predation within their own species), and it should be no surprise to learn that big monitor species sometimes (or even often) prey on and eat smaller ones. The phenomenon whereby predators predate on other, typically smaller, predators is termed intraguild predation, and [...]

The Gila monster Heloderma suspectum and its close relative the Mexican Beaded lizard H. horridum are the only two extant members of Helodermatidae, the gila monster clade.  It’s been agreed for a considerable time that, among living lizards, helodermatids are most closely related to monitor lizards (varanids) and to the weird Bornean earless monitor Lanthanotus [...]

Among the most controversial and remarkable of living tetrapods are the bizarre amphisbaenians: a group of fossorial, long-bodied carnivorous animals with reduced or absent limbs, spade-shaped or bullet-shaped skulls strongly modified for burrowing, and an annulated body where distinct, regularly arranged transverse segments give the animals a worm-like appearance. [Adjacent image combines diagram from Gans [...]

Long-time readers will know that I’ve been involved in a great long list of failed book projects. Once upon a time I made significant progress on a book about MESOZOIC MARINE REPTILES; alas, it exploded on the launch pad and everybody died. Unable to find time to do anything else (I’m working, when time allows, [...]