What are the closest living relatives of the family of lizards that includes the species Varanus komodoensis?
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Varanidae The Varanidae (varans) are a family of lizards of the superfamily Varanoidea. The family, a group of carnivorous and frugivorous lizards, includes the extinct Megalania (the largest known lizard), the Komodo dragon (the largest living lizard), and the crocodile monitor. The Varanidae contain the living genus "Varanus" and a number of extinct taxa. Their closest living relatives are the anguid and helodermatid lizards.
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Komodo dragon The Komodo dragon ("Varanus komodoensis"), also known as the Komodo monitor, is a large species of lizard found in the Indonesian islands of Komodo, Rinca, Flores, Gili Motang, and Padar. A member of the monitor lizard family Varanidae, it is the largest living species of lizard, growing to a maximum length of 3 m in rare cases and weighing up to approximately 70 kg .
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Brookesia Brookesia is a genus of chameleons, endemic to Madagascar, that range from small to very small in size, and are known collectively as leaf chameleons (though this name also commonly is used for species in the genera "Rieppeleon" and "Rhampholeon"). "Brookesia" includes species considered to be the world's smallest chameleons, and are also among the smallest reptiles. Members of the genus "Brookesia" are largely brown and most are essentially terrestrial. A significant percentage of the species in the genus were only identified to science within the last three decades, and a number of species that still have not received a scientific name are known to exist. Most inhabit very small ranges in areas that are difficult to access, and due to their small size and secretive nature, they have been relatively poorly studied compared to their larger relatives.
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Lacertoidea The Lacertoidea is a group of lizards that includes the Lacertidae, Teiidae, Gymnophthalmidae, and the burrowing Amphisbaenia.
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Goniopholididae Goniopholididae is an extinct family of moderate-sized semi-aquatic crocodyliforms superficially similar to living crocodiles (but see below). They lived between the Early Jurassic and the Late Cretaceous.
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Kumi Lizard The Kumi Lizard is a cryptid reptile, possibly a giant monitor lizard, which allegedly once lived in New Zealand. It is similar to the giant extinct Australian lizard Megalania except that it allegedly lives in trees.
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Protorothyrididae Protorothyrididae is an extinct family of small, lizard-like reptiles. Their skulls did not have fenestrae, as is also true of modern turtles and tortoises. Protorothyridids lived from the Late Carboniferous to Early Permian periods, in what is now North America. Many genera of primitive reptiles were thought to be protorothyridids. "Brouffia", "Coelostegus", "Paleothyris" and "Hylonomus", for example, were recently found to be more basal eureptiles.
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Saniwa Saniwa is an extinct genus of monitor lizards that lived during the Eocene epoch around 48 million years ago. Well-preserved fossils have been found in the Bridger and Green River Formations of Wyoming, and evidence indicates "Saniwa" also lived in Europe. The type species "S. ensidens" was named in 1870 as the first fossil lizard known from North America. Several other species have since been added, but their validity is uncertain. It is a close relative of "Varanus", the genus that includes extant monitor lizards.
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Orycteropodidae Orycteropodidae is a family of afrotherian mammals. Although there are many fossil species, the only species surviving today is the aardvark, "Orycteropus afer". Orycteropodidae is recognized as the only family within the order Tubulidentata, so the two are effectively synonyms.
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Herpetotheriidae Herpetotheriidae is an extinct family of metatherians. Although sometimes placed in the living opossum family (Didelphidae, as a subfamily Herpetotheriinae), they may form the sister clade to all living marsupials. Species of this family are generally reconstructed as terrestrial. Fossils of herpetotheriids come from North America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and perhaps South America. The oldest representative is "Maastrichtidelphys" from the latest Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of the Netherlands and the youngest member is "Amphiperatherium" from the Middle Miocene of Europe.
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Mertens' water monitor Mertens' or Mertens's water monitor ("Varanus mertensi" ), often misspelled Merten's water monitor, is a member of the monitor lizard family found in northern Australia, and is a wide-ranging, actively foraging, opportunistic predator of aquatic and riparian habitats. It is named after German herpetologist Robert Mertens.
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Euposauridae Euposauridae was a family of lizards from the Jurassic of Europe. They were small to medium-sized.
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Carusia Carusia is an extinct genus of lizard from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia. It is a close relative of the family Xenosauridae, which includes living knob-scaled lizards. Fossils of the type and only species Carusia intermedia come from the late-Campanian age Barun Goyot Formation and have been found in the Flaming Cliffs, Ukhaa Tolgod, and Kheerman Tsav fossil localities. "Carusia" was first described in 1985 under the name "Carolina intermedia", but since the name "Carolina" was preoccupied by a genus of scarab beetles that had been named in 1880, it was renamed "Carusia intermedia". "Carusia" had initially been known from fragmentary skull material, complicating efforts to determine its evolutionary relationships with other lizards; it had variously been described as an indeterminate scincomorph, a xenosaurid, or some other type of autarchoglossan lizard convergent with xenosaurids. However, the discovery of 35 complete skulls in the 1990s, three of which were described in a detailed 1998 monograph, revealed that "Carusia" was the sister taxon (closest relative) of Xenosauridae, compelling the authors of the monograph to create a new clade called Carusioidea to include both taxa.
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Tiliqua gigas Tiliqua gigas (Indonesian blue-tongued skink) is a close relative of the Eastern blue-tongued lizard. They are endemic to the island of New Guinea and other various surrounding islands. They are found typically in the rainforest, and in captivity, require high humidity. As opposed to "Tiliqua scincoides", they are fairly lean. They're also accompanied by long tails (60–90% of their SVL). There are currently three subspecies of "Tiliqua gigas". First subspecies to be recognized is "Tiliqua gigas gigas" (Schneider, 1801), in which are simply called the Indonesian blue-tongued skink. The second subspecies is "Tiliqua gigas keyensis" (Oudemans, 1894), typically called the Kei island blue-tongued skink. Lastly, there is "Tiliqua gigas evanescens", which is called the Merauke blue-tongued skink.
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Poposauridae Poposauridae is a family of large carnivorous archosaurs which lived alongside dinosaurs during the Late Triassic. They were around 2.5 to long. Poposaurids are known from fossil remains from North and South America. While originally believed to be theropod dinosaurs (they mirrored the theropods in a number of respects, such as features of the skull and bipedal locomotion), cladistic analysis has shown them to be of closer relation to crocodiles.
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Monstersauria Monstersauria is a clade of varanoid lizards, defined as all taxa more closely related to "Heloderma" than "Varanus". It includes "Heloderma", as well as several extinct genera, such as "Estesia" and "Gobiderma", but it was found to be polyphyletic in the most recent and complete squamate phylogenetic analysis by Reeder "et al." (2015).
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Kuehneosauridae Kuehneosauridae is an extinct family of small, lizard-like lepidosauromorph diapsids known from the Triassic period of Europe and North America.
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Komodo Biosphere Reserve The Komodo Biosphere Reserve and National Park is situated between Flores and Sumbawa in Indonesia. It is renowned for its population of about 5,000 giant lizards, called 'Komodo dragons' ("Varanus komodoensis"). They exist nowhere else in the world and are of significant interest to scientists studying the theory of evolution.
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Eublepharinae The Eublepharinae are one of five subfamilies of the Gekkonidae, or geckos. The Eublepharinae subfamily has 27 species in five genera. Also called eyelid geckos, the eublepharines have more primitive features than other geckos. In particular, their feet lack the modifications that allow most other geckos to climb sheer surfaces. Unlike other geckos, they also have movable eyelids. They are nocturnal lizards, often preying on insects and similar creatures. They lay a pair of leathery eggs, and, in at least some species, the sex of the young is determined by the temperature of incubation, as in crocodiles.
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Phascolarctidae The Phascolarctidae ("Phasco" - pouch or bag, "larct"- from the Greek "arctos" meaning bear) are a family of marsupials of the order Diprotodontia, consisting of only one extant species, the koala, and six well-known fossil species, with another five less well known fossil species, and two fossil species of the genus "Koobor", whose taxonomy is debatable but are placed in this group. The closest relatives of the Phascolarctidae are the wombats, which comprise the family Vombatidae.
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Hylodidae The Hylodidae are a small family of frogs. Whether their sister taxon is the Dendrobatoidea or Alsodidae is still under debate. They are native to Brazil and northern Argentina.
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Tylosaurus Tylosaurus (Greek "τυλος"/"tylos" "protuberance, knob" + Greek "σαυρος"/"sauros" "lizard") was a mosasaur, a large, predatory marine lizard closely related to modern monitor lizards and to snakes.