RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: who knows what it is??
The Lizard which was not a lizard ...
When the zoologist John E.Gray of the british Museum, received a reptile skull from New Zealand in the 1831 he described it, and on account of the large wedge-shaped four front teeth of the upper jaw named it sph?nodon. He thought it was the skull of a lizard, but was puzzled about the attachment.of the lower jaw to the skull, which differed greatly from those lizards. Eleven years later Dr. E. Dieddebach bought some specimens of this "lizard" to england and gray, forgetting the skull he had examined a decade before, described these reptiles as new to science and put them in the genus Agama ---which are Old World Lizards. He also a new name : Hatteria punctata. thus, this reptile, our tuatara, was know in short decriptions and notes under two different names, and it remained so for the next 25 years
