Reptiles

Exhibitions

Exhibition | NHM

Nature Lab

Live animals and hands-on interactives show you L.A.’s wild side.

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Stories

A life-like painting of a large lizard lurking over a nest of dinosaur eggs with one already in its mouth

2025 Excavated: A Look Back at Some of the Biggest NHM Discoveries

From prehistoric giant lizards and ancient raccoons to newly discovered spiders and heroic extinct dugongs, NHMLAC researchers had a busy year describing new species. Meet some of the coolest creatures our researchers described this year, along with other inspiring discoveries.

A Monster “Goblin” at the Feet of Dinosaurs

Meet the newly discovered giant, armored lizard named for the Hobbit’s goblin prince

A New Skink in Town

How an iNaturalist observation of a non-native lizard could help protect Southern California’s native species—and its economy

Rectangular stone with Maya glyph depicting a man holding a cacao plant. Campeche, Mexico. AD 600-900.

A Virtual Chocolate-y Tour of the Collections

Explore the collections of the Natural History Museum through the lens of chocolate!

Year of the Dragon

Celebrate the 2024 Lunar New Year, Year of the Dragon, with highlights from the collection

Elephant Hill Community Nature Celebration and Habitat Survey

Join community members and scientists, Saturday, October 14, to celebrate and study nature on Elephant Hill, an open space in North East L.A. valuable to humans and wildlife.

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GeckoWatch

GeckoWatch is a community science project to map the fine-scale distribution of nonnative geckos in the United States.

Resources

Helping RASCals

Identifying RASCals

Finding and Photographing RASCals

News & Press

From Mosasaurs to Snakes and Lizards, “Megafilters” Shape Reptile Fossil Collections

The environment and the durability of their bones are the drivers behind which reptiles—and which parts of reptiles—end up shaping museum collections and our understanding of the fossil record.

Discovery of Bolg amondol, a name inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings universe, reveals the complex evolutionary history of giant Gila Monster relatives

A new study finds that land-dwelling crocodile-like sebecids were the apex predators of the West Indies, surviving on the islands after vanishing from South America

A Lighthouse in the Gobi Desert

A new study quantifies the impact of the world’s great fossil sites on our understanding of evolutionary relationships between fossil groups and discovers the key to understanding lizard evolutionary history in the Gobi Desert.