Lepidosaurs from Gondwana: An Introduction

Abstract

Lepidosaurian reptiles (squamates and rhynchocephalians) comprise one of the world's most diverse groups of tetrapods, with most of that diversity found in regions of the world that once formed the supercontinent of Gondwana. In this special section of the Journal of Herpetology, we present both review and original studies on the evolution of lepidosaurs from Gondwana. In this contribution, we provide a brief introduction to those studies and also present metadata collected from the Web of Science on the progress of the study of lepidosaurian evolution. The latter indicate a substantial increase of research interest in multiple aspects of lepidosaur evolution worldwide, with special increase for lepidosaurs from Gondwanan continents. We conclude by setting some of the main goals we hope to achieve in the study of lepidosaurs from Gondwana in the near future.