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Tuatara are greenish brown and grey, and measure up to 80 cm (31 in) from head to tail-tip and weigh up to 1.3 kg (2.9 lb) [10] with a spiny crest along the back, especially pronounced in males. They have two rows of teeth in the upper jaw overlapping one row on the lower jaw, which is unique among living species.
Like most lizards, geckos can lose their tails in defence, a process called autotomy; the predator may attack the wriggling tail, allowing the gecko to escape. [ 8 ] The largest species, Gigarcanum delcourti , is only known from a single, stuffed specimen probably collected in the 19th century found in the basement of the Natural History Museum ...
A white-headed dwarf gecko with tail lost due to autotomy. Autotomy (from the Greek auto-, "self-" and tome, "severing", αὐτοτομία) or 'self-amputation', is the behaviour whereby an animal sheds or discards an appendage, [1] usually as a self-defense mechanism to elude a predator's grasp or to distract the predator and thereby allow escape.
The integument, or body covering, of Psittacosaurus is known from a Chinese specimen, SMF R 4970, which most likely comes from the Yixian Formation of Liaoning Province, China. The specimen, which is not yet assigned to any particular species, was likely illegally exported from China and was purchased in 2001 by the Senckenberg Museum in Germany .
Second, most lepidosaurs have the ability to autotomize their tails. However, this trait has been lost on some recent species. In lizards and rhynchocephalians, fracture planes are present within the vertebrae of the tail that allow for its removal. Some lizards have multiple fracture planes, while others just have a single fracture plane.
Leopard geckos were first described as a species by zoologist Edward Blyth in 1854 as Eublepharis macularius. [1] The generic name Eublepharis is a combination of the Greek words eu (good) and blepharos (eyelid), as having eyelids is the primary characteristic that distinguishes members of this subfamily from other geckos, along with a lack of lamellae.
Aside from legless lizards, most lizards are quadrupedal and move using gaits with alternating movement of the right and left limbs with substantial body bending. This body bending prevents significant respiration during movement, limiting their endurance, in a mechanism called Carrier's constraint .
A skink thus often manages to escape and hide under some rock, log, or fallen leaves while the predator still contemplates the wildly thrashing severed tail. (This is an instance of what is called autotomy: voluntarily shedding a body part in order to escape, and later regenerating the body part.) After the tail regenerates, it usually has the ...