Modern and Fossil Lizards of Australia

Moloch horridus (Thorny devil)

Australian lizards include the snakes (Boidae, Colubridae, Elapidae), the dragons (Agamidae), skinks (Scincidae), geckos (Gekkonidae), pygopods (Pygopodidae), and the goannas (Varanidae). There is more diversity of lizards on this island continent than any other region of the world. New species are still being discovered and described, yet the fossil history is very poorly understood.

Over a decade ago, while attending the Second World Congress of Herpetology in Adelaide, QSP Director Dr. Jim Mead was asked to begin work on the Pleistocene (Ice Age) lizards recovered from caves in the state of Western Australia. While the mammals and human artifacts were already studied, no one had studied the fossil lizards – and for good reason. There are only three people in all the country who study the skeletons of Australian lizards and there really is no concerted effort to produce a comprehensive comparative collection of modern skeletons.

The project is two-fold:

1. Build an adequate skeleton collection of the living lizard fauna of Western Australia for the Western Australian Museum. From this, we and others can begin to understand the skeletal morphology of these unusual and often endemic species.
2. Discover the evolutionary history, record the dispesal patterns, and reconstruct community structures related to climate change throughout the Neogene (most recent 23 million years) as recorded in the fossil deposits.

Marci Hollenshead weighing a skink

Obviously this is a long-term project with multiple players, one that is being organized from NAU. Ph.D. student Marci Hollenshead (Department of Biological Sciences) is doing her dissertation on the modern and fossil Egernia-group skinks. Sandra Swift is producing digital photographs of all modern and fossil specimens of lizards, and is sorting fossils from cave matrix. Dr. Mead is working on the morphology of modern and fossil species with emphasis toward the dragons. Chris Bell (University of Texas at Austin, Jackson School of Geosciences) is working on the morphology of modern and fossil species with emphasis toward the geckos. These aspects of the project are being conducted with the help of Paul Doughty, Brad Maryan, and Claire Stevenson who are the herpetologists at the Western Australian Museum, Perth. Their work also coordinates with the paleontologists at WAM, Alex Baynes and Gavin Prideaux. They also coordinate with other lizard morphologists and paleontologist such as Mark Hutchinson (South Australian Museum, Adelaide) and Scott Hocknull (Queensland Museum, Brisbane) both who work on modern morphology and fossils mainly of the eastern states.

Besides slowly and consistently examining the living species from WA, the researchers are working on the fossils from the following caves:

• Hastings – Jurien Coast
• Devils Lair, Tunnel, Skull, Yallingup – Cape Naturalist
• Madura, Wombat, Weebubbie, Webbs, Horseshoe, Cocklebiddy – Nullarbor Plain