Knowra Lizard Lizard Lizards are a diverse group of squamate reptiles, usually four-legged and covered in scales. Most have movable eyelids and external ear openings, traits generally absent in snakes.
Squamata : The reptile order containing lizards, snakes, and amphisbaenians. Lizards are one major lineage within this scale-bearing reptile order.
Thermoregulation : The processes by which an organism maintains or adjusts its body temperature. Most lizards alter body temperature by moving between sunlit and shaded places.
Komodo dragon : The world's largest living lizard, a monitor native to several Indonesian islands. Its size and predatory habits exemplify one extreme of lizard diversity.
Snake : An elongate, limbless squamate reptile with no movable eyelids or external ear openings. Snakes are lizards' closest familiar comparison, though their body plan and anatomy differ.
Reptile evolution : The evolutionary history of reptiles and their extinct relatives. Lizard origins are part of the broader diversification of reptiles.
Reptile : A vertebrate in the amniote lineage that includes turtles, crocodilians, tuatara, and squamates. This broader group places lizards among amniotes with scales or other keratinized coverings.
Lizard locomotion : The range of movement patterns lizards use, including walking, running, climbing, and swimming. Limb posture and body shape produce distinctive ways of moving across different surfaces.
Marine iguana : A Galápagos iguana that forages in the sea and eats marine algae. It is the only living lizard known to forage at sea.
Amphisbaenian : A group of mostly burrowing squamates with elongated bodies and reduced or absent limbs. Their wormlike form can obscure their close relationship to lizards and snakes.
Lepidosauria : A reptile group containing squamates and tuatara, along with their extinct relatives. Lizards belong to the squamate branch of this larger lineage.
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