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“You’ve become an expert in crocodilian scalation,” Dr. Raxworthy said to Ms. Meah, apparently a huge compliment.

The majority of pet Central bearded dragons are of the standard ‘wild type’, but it’s becoming increasingly well known that people have created several remarkable forms through selective breeding: there are now giant bearded dragons, forms with reduced or smooth scalation termed leatherbacks and silkbacks, ‘translucent’ form with reduced pigmentation, ‘Witblits’ forms that essentially lack all patterning, the also patternless ‘silverbacks’ , and numerous colour morphs.

The Pink-tongued skink is specifically Cyclodomorphus-like in its pattern of supraocular scalation, in the arrangement of its skull bones, and even in the sort of tongue-flicking behaviour it practises.

Many specimens deviate from the scalation typical of the form they represent, and key out to other species.

Scalation is remarkably uniform in all the subspecies of sirtalis, but coastal and northern populations tend to have fewer ventrals and subcaudals than do their counterparts farther inland and farther south.