Mystery lizard, identification help?

[Ravnos]

Friend of mine rescued this little guy the other day - heavily beat up as you can see. Well, neither of us can figure out what species he is. He looks kind of like a rainbow lizard (whiptail) - but the belly scales are all wrong, basic coloration is wrong, and head shape is more like a sandfish skink but he's too big to be a sandfish and sandfish are banded, not striped. So we're kind of stumped... anyone else have an ideas?






Rav
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[GizmO]

well, to me it definalty looks like some kind of skink but, not sure exactly what kind. When looking at the first pics I was thinking some kind of lined skink but, when ya see all the markings on the back, I don't think that is right.
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[telefrag]

I thought it looked like a Gerrhosaurus sp.

poor thing.
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[herpkingdom]

OK, i came up with two others that closely resemble this lizard. Both are subspecies of the Mole SKink and the only way to actually tell the two apart are by the taiul color and being that this guy is missing his tail it is hard to get the correct ssp.

So it might be either the
Peninsula Mole Skink or a
Cedar Key Mole Skink.

Ah, I editted out my first guess which was totally wrong [img]modules/Forum/images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img]


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Jim Dixon

[BWSmith]

Sandfish
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[Ravnos]

Dunno... doesn't look quite like either of those skinks.

I refuse to agree to sandfish until someone shows me a pic of a sandfish that looks like him, I keep sandfish, I've seen literally hundreds... I went digging for pictures of other species of sandfish and have found nothing that looks even remotely like him. The general head structure is correct, but the rest of him isn't.

Rav
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[eddie]

I did some searching but only came up with what I feared the most.....

Blue tailed skinks DO exist!

blue tailed skink.
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[herpkingdom]

OK, try this....

Another species of Sandfish

Scincus mitranus

_________________
Jim Dixon

[Ravnos]

Close, but still no cigar. If I'm not mistaken, S. mitranus is pretty hard to come by in the pet trade because it is a protected species in its home range. Quite often normal egyptian sandfish skinks will show up with that species name labelled on them so importers can milk extra money out of unknowning buyers. Anyway... thats not the same as my mystery lizard. [img]modules/Forum/images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img]

Rav
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[telefrag]

It really really really really looks like a species of plated lizards from S. Africa, if anyone has a field guide to the reptiles of south africa, they will see a Gerrhosaurus that looks like much like it, minus the damage.


Here is a similiar pic.

[eddie]

Those don't look to have the blue face and the stripes aren't quite as wide....a little sharper in the definition also.

Whats the story on the damage, Rav?
Burn, fungal infection gone nuts?
Heaven forbid.. owner abusing it?

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[Ravnos]

I honestly have no idea what the story is. He was dumped at a local pet store. No comments made, no questions asked. It looks like a fungal or bacterial infection of some sort, not much like a burn (god knows, I've seen enough of those on iguanas). He's been getting soaked in novalsan which has done wonders for his skin tone and hydration. Of course, without finding out what kind of lizard he is - we don't know whether to set him up desert, or humid, or what. [img]modules/Forum/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] So we go with an in between setup, uberUV and hope for the best.

Rav
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