Lacertoidea
The Lacertoidea is a group of squamate reptiles that includes the Lacertidae, Teiidae, Gymnophthalmidae, and Amphisbaenia. The finding from molecular phylogenetic studies that the burrowing Amphisbaenia were nested in a clade with the lizard forms led Vidal & Hedges (2005) to propose a new name for the group based on shared morphogical characters, Laterata, "referring to the presence of tile-like scales that form the rings in Amphisbaenia, and are also present ventrally in Lacertiformata and Teiformata".

Stanislaw Szydlo · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
- EpisquamataPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At least 251 million years on record.
The record covers at least 251.902 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 259.857 Mya to 0 Mya.
793 occurrences of Lacertoidea on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
793 occurrences- Permianunder 1%
- Early Triassic3%
- Middle Triassic6%
- Late Triassic6%
- Late Jurassicunder 1%
- Early Cretaceous3%
- Late Cretaceous5%
- Paleocene1%
- Eocene11%
- Oligocene10%
- Miocene23%
- Pliocene7%
- Pleistocene20%
- Holocene3%
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
143 formations
- Passaic Formation · Chatham Group14
- La Victoria Formation · Honda Group13
- Upper Freshwater Molasse Formation · Molasse Group12
- Hsanda Gol Formation12
- Timezgadiouine Formation · Argana Group11
- Perrière Formation10
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Lacertoidea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 119 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 442 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Lacertoidea and its relatives
MioceneWhere Lacertoidea and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
3,035 taxa- Lacerta64 sites
- Lacertidae42 sites
- Rhynchosauroides39 sites
- Aves36 sites
- Ophisaurus29 sites
- Rana28 sites
- Serpentes25 sites
- Anura23 sites
- Bufo23 sites
- Colubrinae22 sites
- Gekkonidae22 sites
- Mimomys22 sites
- Colubridae20 sites
- Grallator19 sites
- Pseudopus18 sites
- Elaphe17 sites
- Natricinae17 sites
- Vipera17 sites
- Allocricetus16 sites
- Testudo16 sites
- Microtus15 sites
- Natrix15 sites
- Osteichthyes15 sites
- Teiidae15 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 558 sites for Lacertoidea, and this reads 240 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
324 references- Evolution des lézards du Paléogène en Europe65
- Pleistocene Amphibians and Reptiles in Britain and Europe40
- A reassessment of the fossil Tupinambinae21
- 3. Herpetofauna (Anura, Squamata) and palaeoclimatic implications: preliminary results14
- Plio-Pleistocene fossil vertebrates of Monte Tuttavista (Orosei, Eastern Sardinia, Italy), an overview13
- Late Cainozoic localities of snakes and lizards of Ukraine12
- Pleistocene vertebrate faunas of Hungary12
- The new rare record of the late Oligocene lizards and amphisbaenians from Germany and its impact on our knowledge of the European terminal Palaeogene11
- Zur Kenntnis der Sauria (Lacertilia) aus dem Eozän des Geiseltals (The Sauria (Lacertilia) from the Eocene of Geiseltal)11
- Amphibians and Squamates from the Miocene of Felsőtárkány Basin, N-Hungary10
- The Tracks of Triassic Vertebrates: Fossil Evidence from North-West England10
- Biostratigraphy of vertebrate footprints in the Late Triassic section of the Newark Basin, Pennsylvania: reassessment of stratigraphic ranges10
Each of the 793 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. 312 further references are not listed. 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 content1
Picture of Lacertoidea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Stanislaw Szydlo
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Lacertoidea 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Lacertoidea”
- 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 itEpisquamata through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Camp 1923)