For more than a century, biologists assumed that the bony plates embedded in the skin of lizards – like natural chain mail – were an ancient feature that some lineages inherited and others later lost.

Every morning in Miami, our fieldwork begins the same way. Fresh Cuban coffee and pastelitos – delicious Latin American pastries – fuel our team for another day of evolutionary detective work. Here we ...

The fossil record of squamates, encompassing both lizards and snakes, provides an intricate account of evolutionary innovation over millions of years. Fossils elucidate key morphological transitions, ...

Biologists have long regarded the bony plates found in some lizards as an ancient legacy, passed down and occasionally lost.

Scientists in Australia have discovered a rare new lizard species with no front arms and only back limbs, revealing how ...

A University of Bristol study has shed light on how lizards and snakes—the most diverse group of land vertebrates with nearly 12,000 species—have evolved remarkably varied jaw shapes, driving their ...

In tropical climates, lizards are everywhere. It can be a bit wild to see, and they come in all shapes and sizes. They seem a tad superfluous in such large varieties leaving one to wonder, what ...

A 205-million-year-old fossil, hidden in a museum, has been identified as the oldest modern lizard, triggering a significant chapter in the history of evolution. The small, fossilized lizard, that has ...

We are lizard biologists, and to do our work we need to catch lizards – never an easy task with such fast, agile creatures. Years ago, one of us was in the Bahamas chasing a typically uncooperative ...

What factors drive diversification in species groups with wide distributions and high morphological disparity? Pavón-Vázquez et al. used an extensive morphological and phylogenetic dataset to ...

(THE CONVERSATION) Every morning in Miami, our fieldwork begins the same way. Fresh Cuban coffee and pastelitos – delicious Latin American pastries – fuel our team for another day of evolutionary ...