When it comes to oceanian animals, the first thing that comes to mind is often kangaroos, koalas, emus and platypus. Indeed, this piece, called The Continent, is actually an ecosphere of mega-islands plus several large islands and a bunch of small islands, which is so different from other continents. The mega island – Australia is home to a large number of "post-beasts" – marsupials, and each small island has many unique creatures.
The islands of Oceania are home to numerous endemic creatures | Abaconda Management Group / Wikimedia Commons
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > ancient creatures of New Zealand</h1>
The two large islands in the southeast corner of Oceania, known to Homo sapiens as New Zealand, are also a very unique country: there are no snakes, no native large mammals, and various birds occupy a large ecological niche. It is also the last of the Eden of an ancient relict species whose ancestors once roamed the same sky as dinosaurs in the Mesozoic Era. Although the cataclysm of 66 million years ago wiped out non-avian dinosaurs, they survived, the wedge-toothed lizard Sphenodon punctatus.
The wedge-toothed lizard with its teeth exposed | Bernard Spragg / Flickr
The name of the wedge lizard is based on its special arrangement of teeth: the back teeth of the upper jaw are arranged in double rows, while the single row of teeth in the back of the lower jaw fits into the upper jaw teeth like a wedge. Wedge-toothed lizards are about 40 cm long, while larger males can grow up to 60 cm and weigh about 1 kg. The body color of the wedge-toothed lizard is usually gray-green or olive-green, which allows him to blend well with his surroundings. It has a protruding list of "spines" on its back, and it is said that the Maori name of the wedge lizard means "spine on the back".
This bread can be said to be very graphic | Claire U / Flickr
The wedge-toothed lizard also has a special organ: the pineal eye. This is a "third eye" that grows on the top of the head. It is not a decoration, but a genuine eye connected to the nerves of the brain (pineal gland), with photosensitive capacity, and may also be related to the perception of circadian rhythms and the regulation of body temperature. The small holes in the pineal eye can be clearly seen on the skull of the wedge lizard.
The small hole in the skull of the wedge-toothed lizard | Two pigs
Another feature of the wedge-toothed lizard is that it has a special longevity, which can live to more than 100 years old, and even the 100-year-old wedge lizard can still breed! Not only that, they are still very late in sexual maturity, and they can only mature sexually at the age of 20, which is similar to us Homo sapiens, except that most of us dream of living a long life, but there are very few people who can really live to be 100 years old.
The wedge-toothed lizard, named Henry, was able to reproduce at the age of 111 | KeresH / Wikimedia Commons
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the last beak class</h1>
The name of the wedge lizard makes you think that it is a kind of lizard, their appearance is indeed similar, just find a lizard to put next to the wedge lizard, as a layman, although there is no sense of violation, but always feel that there is still something wrong between the two. However, the wedge-toothed lizard is not a lizard, it belongs to an ancient taxon: beaked heads. And the wedge-toothed lizard is the only bloodline of the beaked head, and their other relatives have disappeared from the earth.
I'm the only one left? | Brianna Laugher / Flickr
When I was in middle school, biology textbooks classified vertebrates as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. However, in recent years, the old taxonomic theory is considered to have many shortcomings, and the new theory is that the crocodiles and turtles that previously belonged to the same reptile order are still relatively distant from the relationship between the beaked head and the squamous lizards and snakes, so taxonomists have proposed the concept of lizards, in which the lepidosaurs include beaked heads and scaly orders, that is, wedge lizards and lizards, snakes.
Wedge lizards prey on insects | Discovery UK / Youtube
In the early or middle Triassic, the ancestors of the wedge-toothed lizard and the lizard each followed different evolutionary paths. "Living fossils" is what many people think about wedge lizards, and indeed, comparing fossils from 200 million years ago with the bones of living wedge lizards can find many similarities, but this is not to say that the beak leader has always been like this.
In the Mesozoic Era, the ancestors of the beaked leaders actually mixed quite well, occupying many ecological niches similar to those of living lizards, and also evolved a vegetarian, meat-eating, aquatic, arboreal and other not a single appearance. But perhaps compared with the lizards, it is almost a little bit of fate, and eventually this group of people has gone into decline, and can only survive on the island.
Conservation in New Zealand has launched an artificial breeding project for the wedge-toothed lizard to help its population recover | Nordstjern / Flickr
Speaking of almost, the wedge lizard is really worse than an organ: the mating apparatus. Lizards and snakes both have two barbed mating devices with two heads: a half-penis. And wedge lizards don't have this stuff! Maybe there are small partners who are strange, without this thing, how to pass on the generations? This question, as long as you have a nest of chickens, roosters and hens, when they mate, you can see clearly.
Domestic chickens mate by "pairing" the cloaca together, a process also known as the "kiss of the cloaca", and the mating behavior of the wedge lizard is similar to that of | Govinda Timilsina / Youtube
Wedge lizards were once widely distributed in New Zealand's South Island and North Island, but with humans coming to this paradise, wedge lizards and some endemic creatures of New Zealand have disappeared, and now there are only a small number of groups on a few small islands, and the survival situation is not optimistic. To this end, the New Zealand government has enacted extremely strict laws to protect wedge lizards, and if they violate the law, they will be punished with very severe penalties.
The Zealandia Conservation Centre in Wellington, New Zealand, is home to many native species, including wedge lizards, and has been fenced to prevent the invasion of alien species | Tony Wills / Wikimedia Commons
This article is from the species calendar, welcome to forward
If you need to reprint, please contact [email protected]