This is a site dedicated to things that fascinate me :
A few other gekkotan groups have sometimes been recognised.Teratoscincus was considered worthy of its own 'subfamily', termed Teratoscincinae, by Kluge (1987) [T. keyserlingiishown here; from wikipedia]. The Cat geckoAeluroscalabotes felinus of south-eastern Asia has also been given its own 'subfamily' on occasion, dubbed Aeluroscalabotinae (modern classifications generally include A. felinus in Eublepharidae). The name Phyllodactylidae has sometimes been used for the American leaf-toed geckos (e.g., Blair et al. 2009) and a group of African gekkonines have sometimes been referred to as the Ptyodactylini.
We'll look at gekkotan phylogeny later on. Much more to come. Coming next: voices, eggshells and cervical sacs.
For previous Tet Zoo articles on neat squamates see...
- Mosasaurs might have used the same microscopic streamlining tricks as sharks and dolphins
- Tongues, venom glands, and the changing face of Goronyosaurus
- Dinosaurs come out to play (so do turtles, and crocodilians, and Komodo dragons)
- Tell me something new about basilisks, puh-lease
- 'Cryptic intermediates' and the evolution of chameleons
- The Great Goswell Copse Zootoca
- Of giant plated lizards and rough-necked monitors
- Ermentrude the liolaemine
- Evolutionary intermediates among the girdled lizards
- Hell yes: Komodo dragons!!!
- Amazing social life of the Green iguana
- Arboreal alligator lizards - yes, really
- Pompey and Steepo, the world-record-holding champion slow-worms
Refs - -
Darren Naish - me - is, or was, a vertebrate palaeontologist, formerly based at the University of Portsmouth, UK. They still host my homepage, but have usefully deleted all the links to the pdfs I so lovingly uploaded (if you want pdfs of any of the papers listed there don't hesitate to email me and ask: eotyrannus at gmail dot com). From 1997 to 2006 I worked on the predatory dinosaurs of the Lower Cretaceous of southern England, focusing for my phd on the basal tyrannosauroid Eotyrannus. A full monographic description of Eotyrannus will be published one day. Between April and August 2007 I worked for Impossible Pictures, the TV company that produced Walking With Dinosaurs and other such projects, and right now (July 2008) I work as a technical editor and freelance author.
I like dinosaurs very much, but they're far from the only animals that I find interesting. I'm fascinated by all tetrapods and have some practical and research experience with Mesozoic marin