Agama

Agama is a genus of small-to-moderate-sized, long-tailed, insectivorous Old World lizards. The genus Agama includes at least 37 species in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, where most regions are home to at least one species. Eurasian agamids are largely assigned to genus Laudakia. The various species differ in size, ranging from about 12 to 30 centimetres in length, when fully grown.

Agama

Lennart Hudel · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
AgamidaePBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota

Time the record covers

At least 65 million years on record.

The record covers at least 66 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 72.2 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Late Cretaceous — about 1 of 9 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 0 of 9 occurrencesEocene — about 0 of 9 occurrencesOligocene — about 1 of 9 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 0 of 9 occurrencesPliocene — about 4 of 9 occurrencesPleistocene — about 3 of 9 occurrences74–71 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences71–69 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences69–66 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences66–64 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences29–27 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences27–25 Mya — about 0.6 occurrences25–22 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences7.4–4.9 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences4.9–2.5 Mya — about 4 occurrences2.5–0 Mya — about 3 occurrences66 Mya129 ka74 Mya0 Mya

9 occurrences of Agama on record, most of them in the Pliocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

9 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Agama and its relatives

Pliocene

Where Agama and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.

Found in the same rock

172 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 9 sites for Agama, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

7 references

Each of the 9 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content2

Picture of Agama

Credit
Lennart Hudel
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

CT scan

Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Specimen
Agama colonorum · UMZC:Vertebrates:R.18880

Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itAgamidae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Daudin 1802