Lygosominae
Lygosominae is the largest subfamily of skinks in the family Scincidae. The subfamily can be divided into a number of genus groups. If the rarely used taxonomic rank of infrafamily is employed, the genus groups would be designated as such, but such a move would require a formal description according to the ICZN standards.

L. Shyamal · 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
- ScincidaePBDB
- Diet
- insectivorePBDB, for Scincidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Scincidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At least 23 million years on record.
The record covers at least 23.04 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 27.3 Mya to 0 Mya.
22 occurrences of Lygosominae on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. 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
22 occurrences- Oligocene23%
- Miocene18%
- Pliocene5%
- Pleistocene41%
- Holocene14%
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
4 formations
- Namba Formation4
- Upper Freshwater Molasse Formation · Molasse Group2
- Etadunna Formation1
- Kanapoi Formation1
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The named rock units Lygosominae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 14 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Lygosominae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Lygosominae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
443 taxa- Egernia7 sites
- Antechinus flavipes6 sites
- Tiliqua6 sites
- Bettongia lesueur5 sites
- Cercartetus lepidus5 sites
- Cercartetus nanus5 sites
- Dasyurus viverrinus5 sites
- Isoodon obesulus5 sites
- Lagorchestes5 sites
- Macropus (Macropus) fuliginosus5 sites
- Macropus rufogriseus5 sites
- Mastacomys5 sites
- Perameles gunnii5 sites
- Petaurus breviceps5 sites
- Potorous platyops5 sites
- Procoptodon gilli5 sites
- Pseudocheirus peregrinus5 sites
- Pseudomys5 sites
- Sminthopsis crassicaudata5 sites
- Lacerta4 sites
- Ningaui yvonnae4 sites
- Notomys4 sites
- Procoptodon browneorum4 sites
- Proegernia mikebulli4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 20 sites for Lygosominae, 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
14 references- A new species of Proegernia from the Namba Formation in South Australia and the early evolution and environment of Australian egerniine skinks4
- Holocene vertebrates from a dry cave on Eleuthera Island, Commonwealth of The Bahamas2
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia II2
- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia2
- Late Pleistocene Faunal Remains from Seton Rock Shelter, Kangaroo Island, South Australia2
- Small fossil vertebrates from Victoria Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia. IV. Reptiles2
- Squamate reptiles from Kanapoi: Faunal evidence for hominin paleoenvironments1
- The Palaeolithic cave of Kalamakia (Mani Peninsula), Greece: new insights on the palaeoenvironment using microvertebrates and mesowear analysis of ruminant teeth1
- A new scincid lizard from the Miocene of northern Australia, and the evolutionary history of social skinks (Scincidae: Egerniinae)1
- Ectothermic vertebrates (Actinopterygii, Allocaudata, Urodela, Anura, Crocodylia, Squamata) from the Miocene of Sandelzhausen (Germany, Bavaria) and their implications for environment reconstruction and palaeoclimate1
- Biostratigraphy and palaeoecology of a Middle Miocene (Karpathian, MN 5) fauna from the northern margin of the North Alpine Foreland Basin (Oggenhausen 2, SW' Germany)1
- The oldest genus of scincid lizard (Squamata) from the Tertiary Etadunna Formation of South Australia1
Each of the 22 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. 2 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 Lygosominae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- L. Shyamal
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Lygosominae was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Lygosominae”
- 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 itScincidae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Mittleman 1952