This Article From Issue
November-December 2003
Volume 91, Number 6
DOI: 10.1511/2003.38.0
Ad Left
Lizards are the real-world inspiration for the dragons of medieval fantasies, for reasons that will become obvious to readers of Lizards: Windows to the Evolution of Diversity, by Eric R. Pianka and Laurie J. Vitt (University of California Press, $45).
This engaging, well-researched volume depicts an amazing variety of lacertilian beasts in its lavish illustrations and deftly examines their bizarre lifestyles and behaviors. Evolution has created some fanciful forms among these reptiles: Consider the African chameleon (Chamaeleo parsoni, below, whose slothlike patience is matched with a wickedly quick tongue.
From Lizards: Windows to the Evolution of Diversity.
Or the puny Amazonian leaf-litter gecko (Coleodactylus amazonicus), which weighs only half a gram when it is fully grown and is shown here carrying an egg that can be seen through the surface of its abdomen.—Michael Szpir
From Lizards: Windows to the Evolution of Diversity.
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