Iguania

Iguania is a suborder of squamate reptiles that includes iguanas, chameleons, agamids, and New World lizards. Using morphological features as a guide to evolutionary relationships, the Iguania are believed to form the sister group to the Squamata, which comprise nearly 11,000 named species, roughly 2000 of which are iguanians. However, molecular information has placed Iguania well within the Squamata as sister taxa to the Anguimorpha and closely related to snakes. The order has been under debate and revisions after being classified by Charles Lewis Camp in 1923 due to difficulties finding adequate synapomorphic morphological characteristics. Most iguanians are arboreal but there are several terrestrial groups. They usually have primitive fleshy, non-prehensile tongues, although the tongue is highly modified in chameleons. Today they are scattered occurring in Madagascar, the Fiji and Friendly Islands and Western Hemisphere.

Iguania

Holger Krisp · CC BY 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
ToxicoferaPBDB
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota

Time the record covers

At least 109 million years on record.

The record covers at least 110.1 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 119.57 Mya to 11.7 ka.

Early Cretaceous — about 1 of 32 occurrencesEarly CretaceousLate Cretaceous — about 17 of 32 occurrencesLate CretaceousPaleocene — about 1 of 32 occurrencesEocene — about 9 of 32 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 2 of 32 occurrencesOligoceneMiocene — about 1 of 32 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 32 occurrencesPleistocene — about 1 of 32 occurrences122–118 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences118–114 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences114–110 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences102–98 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences98–94 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences94–89 Mya — about 0.9 occurrences85–81 Mya — about 3 occurrences81–77 Mya — about 5 occurrences77–73 Mya — about 5 occurrences73–69 Mya — about 2 occurrences69–65 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences61–57 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences57–53 Mya — about 2 occurrences53–49 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences49–45 Mya — about 1 occurrence45–41 Mya — about 1 occurrence41–37 Mya — about 2 occurrences37–33 Mya — about 4 occurrences33–28 Mya — about 1.0 occurrences28–24 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences8.1–4.1 Mya — about 1 occurrence4.1–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence110.1 Mya129 ka122 Mya0 Mya

32 occurrences of Iguania on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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

32 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.

Found in

16 formations

Baruungoyot — 43.49°N, 101.15°EBaruungoyot — 43.52°N, 109.12°EBaruungoyot — 43.30°N, 99.60°EBaruungoyot — 43.47°N, 101.52°EBaruungoyot — 43.47°N, 99.83°EDjadokhta — 44.20°N, 103.27°EWasatch — 41.70°N, 109.00°WKhaychin — 43.72°N, 99.93°EErgilin Dzo — 44.00°N, 111.00°EErgilin Dzo — 43.75°N, 111.92°ESaldungaray — 38.42°S, 61.78°WVillalba de la Sierra — 39.95°N, 2.02°WAdamantina — 22.13°S, 51.38°WKhodzhakul — 40.10°N, 65.80°EBissekty — 42.12°N, 62.66°ECollegats — 42.25°N, 1.08°EHeti — 35.30°N, 111.66°EUlan Gochu — 43.21°N, 111.34°EGreen River — 40.17°N, 110.21°WDzunbain — 42.45°N, 102.42°EBrule — 40.93°N, 103.32°W

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The named rock units Iguania has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Iguania and its relatives

Late Cretaceous

Where Iguania and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.

Found in the same rock

377 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 22 sites for Iguania, 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

21 references

Each of the 32 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. 9 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 Iguania

Credit
Holger Krisp
Licence
CC BY 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Iguania 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 itToxicofera through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Cuvier 1817)