Gambelia
Gambelia is a genus of lizards, commonly known as leopard lizards, within the family Crotaphytidae. Leopard lizards are indigenous to arid environments of southwestern North America. Specifically, in San Joaquin Valley and southeastern Carrizo Plain in California, is where the endangered species inhabits as it lives in isolated populations. Furthermore, the Gambelia Sila or leopard lizard is active during the spring to early summer for 2.5 months after they estivate and goes back into hibernation soon after.

Uncredited · 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- Also called
- Leopard lizardsPBDB
- Sits inside
- CrotaphytidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At most 4.5 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 4.7 Mya and 210 ka, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Gambelia on record, most of them in the Pliocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
2 occurrences- Pliocene56%
- Pleistocene45%
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.
Found in
2 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Gambelia has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Gambelia and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Gambelia and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
39 taxa- Bassariscus1 site
- Borophagus diversidens1 site
- Canis lepophagus1 site
- Crotaphytus1 site
- Cuvieronius1 site
- Dinohippus1 site
- Dipsosaurus dorsalis1 site
- Equus (Hemionus)1 site
- Eumeces1 site
- Felinae1 site
- Gerrhonotinae1 site
- Hemiauchenia1 site
- Hypolagus edensis1 site
- Hypolagus ringoldensis1 site
- Lepoides lepoides1 site
- Martinogale1 site
- Megatylopus1 site
- Mimomys panacaensis1 site
- Nekrolagus progressus1 site
- Neotoma1 site
- Notiosorex1 site
- Ondatra1 site
- Ophiomys magilli1 site
- Perognathinae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Gambelia, 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
2 references- Early Pliocene Crotaphytus and Gambelia (Squamata: Crotaphytidae) from the Panaca Formation of southeastern Nevada1
- Late Cenozoic Lizards of the Anza Borrego Desert, California1
Each of the 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Gambelia
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No 3D scan of Gambelia was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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 itCrotaphytidae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Baird and Girard 1852