Reptilia  

Reptiles are recognized as the first fully land vertebrates, evolving 250 million years ago. In the Mesozoic era (195 to 65 millions BC ) or Age of Reptiles, they flourished and were the dominant animals on the planet. For still unknown reasons, this class of animals started then to decline and presently only 4 orders of the original 23 orders have existing species. Members of the other 19 major orders, including the mighty dinosaurs, became extinct over million of years and only fossils remain of them.

Reptiles are cold-blooded animals, meaning that they depend on the environment for body heat as they cannot produce internal heat like mammals or birds can. Therefore, most reptiles are found in the temperate and tropical regions of the world but some of them can survive in colder regions, going into hibernation when winter hits them. Another distinguished feature is that they do not have body hair or feathers but instead are covered with epidermal scales. Reptiles reproduce by laying eggs but in contrast to birds, reptiles do not incubate the eggs or give later parental help. Most species lay the eggs into the ground, covered with earth or sand, which provides the necessary heat for hatching. Some lizards and most snakes give birth to young after they developed in eggs within their body.

On the individual pages you will find a list of the species at the end. It gives you the common name of the reptiles, scientific names and where it can be found, with some additional information, like altitudinal range, habitats, endemism. Below an example of the Giant Tortoise.

Location