Meroles
genus of reptiles
Meroles is a genus of lizards, commonly known as desert lizards, in the family Lacertidae. The genus contains eight species, inhabiting southwestern Africa, especially the Namib Desert.
Description
Desert lizards have fine, granular dorsal scales. The hind toes are elongated and possess fringes of scales.
Species
The following eight species are recognized as being valid.
Meroles anchietae (Bocage, 1867) - shovel-snouted lizard, Anchieta's dune lizard
Meroles ctenodactylus (A. Smith, 1838) - giant desert lizard, Smith's sand lizard, Smith's desert lizard
Meroles cuneirostris (Strauch, 1867) -wedge-snouted sand lizard, wedge-snouted desert lizard
Meroles knoxii (Milne-Edwards, 1829) - Knox's ocellated sand lizard, Knox's desert lizard
Meroles micropholidotus Mertens, 1938 - small-scaled desert lizard
Meroles reticulatus (Bocage, 1867) - reticulate sand lizard
Meroles squamulosus (W. Peters, 1869) - common rough-scaled lizard, savanna lizard
Meroles suborbitalis (W. Peters, 1854) - spotted sand lizard
Nota bene: A binomial authority in parentheses indicates that the species was originally described in a genus other than Meroles.
References
Further reading
Gray JE (1838). "Catalogue of the Slender-tongued Saurians, with Descriptions of many new Genera and Species". Annals and Magazine of Natural History, [First Series] 1: 274–283, 388–394. (Meroles, new genus, p.
“Meroles” enters the record as genus of reptiles. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Meroles, genus and reptiles can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Meroles” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Meroles, genus and reptiles provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q592128. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1867, 1838, 1829 and 1938.
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This entry incorporates text from “Meroles” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.