Sekukhune flat lizard

The Sekukhune flat lizard (Platysaurus orientalis) is a species of lizard in the family Cordylidae. The species is endemic to South Africa. It has two subspecies.[2]

Sekukhune flat lizard(Pempenyane in Pedi language)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Squamata
Family: Cordylidae
Genus: Platysaurus
Species:
P. orientalis
Binomial name
Platysaurus orientalis
Synonyms
  • Platysaurus minor orientalis
    V. FitzSimons, 1941
  • Platysaurus guttatus orientalis — Loveridge, 1944
  • Platysaurus orientalis
    — Jacobsen & Newbery, 1989[2]

Description

Females and juveniles have a black back with white stripes, as well as a white belly. Adult male Sekukhune flat lizards have a green body, and a tail which is orange or red above, and yellow underneath.[3]

Geographic range and habitat

The Sekukhune flat lizard lives in a small area of savannah in South Africa in the Sekhukhuneland natural region. This includes the Mpumalanga Escarpment.[3]

Reproduction

Female Sekukhune flat lizards lay two eggs in a rock crack in early summer.[3]

Diet

The diet of the Sekukhune flat lizard includes insects, including caterpillars.[3]

Subspecies

Two subspecies are recognized.[2]

The subspecific name, fitzsimonsi, is in honor of South African herpetologist (Mr.) Vivian Frederick Maynard FitzSimons.[4]

gollark: I am saying that gods are also complicated so this doesn't answer anything.
gollark: For purposes only, you understand.
gollark: There are lots of *imaginable* and *claimed* gods, so I'm saying "gods".
gollark: So basically, the "god must exist because the universe is complex" thing ignores the fact that it... isn't really... and that gods would be pretty complex too, and does not answer any questions usefully because it just pushes off the question of why things exist to why *god* exists.
gollark: To randomly interject very late, I don't agree with your reasoning here. As far as physicists can tell, while pretty complex and hard for humans to understand, relative to some other things the universe runs on simple rules - you can probably describe the way it works in maybe a book's worth of material assuming quite a lot of mathematical background. Which is less than you might need for, say, a particularly complex modern computer system. You know what else is quite complex? Gods. They are generally portrayed as acting fairly similarly to humans (humans like modelling other things as basically-humans and writing human-centric stories), and even apart from that are clearly meant to be intelligent agents of some kind. Both of those are complicated - the human genome is something like 6GB, a good deal of which probably codes for brain things. As for other intelligent things, despite having tons of data once trained, modern machine learning things are admittedly not very complex to *describe*, but nobody knows what an architecture for general intelligence would look like.

See also

References
  1. "Platysaurus orientalis ". Zipcode Zoo. Archived from the original on 2007-09-30. Retrieved 2007-08-31.
  2. "Platysaurus orientalis ". The Reptile Database. www.reptile-database.org.
  3. Branch, Bill. 2004. Field Guide to Snakes and Other Reptiles of Southern Africa. Third Revised edition, Second impression. Sanibel Island, Florida: Ralph Curtis Books. 399 pp. ISBN 0-88359-042-5. (Platysaurus orientalis, pp. 199-200 + Plate 74).
  4. Beolens B, Watkins M, Grayson M. 2011. The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. ISBN 978-1-4214-0135-5. (Platysaurus orientalis fitzsimonsi, p. 91).

Further reading
  • FitzSimons V. 1941. Descriptions of some New Lizards from South Africa and a Frog from Southern Rhodesia. Ann. Transvaal Mus. 20 (3): 273-281. (Platysaurus minor orientalis, new subspecies, p. 280).
  • Jacobsen NHG, Newbery RE. 1989. The Genus Platysaurus A. Smith 1844 in the Transvaal. African J. Herp. 36: 51-63. (Platysaurus orientalis, new combination; Platysaurus orientalis fitzsimonsi, new combination).
  • Loveridge A. 1944. Revision of the African Lizards of the Family Cordylidae. Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. 95 (1): 1-118 + Plates 1-12. (Platysaurus guttatus fitzsimonsi, new subspecies, pp. 88–89).
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