Animalia > Chordata > Squamata > Cordylidae > Smaug > Smaug giganteus

Smaug giganteus (Giant Girdled Lizard or Sungazer; Giant spinytail lizard)

Synonyms: Cordylus giganteus; Zonurus derbianus

Wikipedia Abstract

The sungazer (Smaug giganteus, syn. Cordylus giganteus), also known as the giant girdled lizard or giant dragon lizard or giant zonure, is the largest species of the Cordylidae, a family of lizards from Sub-Saharan Africa. This threatened species is endemic to Highveld grasslands in the interior of South Africa. In 2011, it was assigned to the new genus Smaug along with seven other species previously belonging to the genus Cordylus, based on a comprehensive molecular phylogeny of the Cordylidae.
View Wikipedia Record: Smaug giganteus

Endangered Species

Status: Vulnerable
View IUCN Record: Smaug giganteus

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  131 grams
Birth Weight [2]  10 grams
Female Weight [2]  274 grams
Habitat Substrate [3]  Terrestrial
Litter Size [2]  3
Litters / Year [2]  1
Maximum Longevity [4]  25 years
Reproductive Mode [3]  Viviparous
Snout to Vent Length [2]  7 inches (17 cm)

Ecoregions

Name Countries Ecozone Biome Species Report Climate Land
Use
Highveld grasslands South Africa Afrotropic Montane Grasslands and Shrublands

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Length–weight allometries in lizards, S. Meiri, Journal of Zoology 281 (2010) 218–226
♦ 2Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 3Meiri, Shai (2019), Data from: Traits of lizards of the world: variation around a successful evolutionary design, Dryad, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.f6t39kj
♦ 4de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0