Roy Ebel

Including these glass lizards, several distantly related ‘worm lizards’ have skin bone plates covering their bodies. We just found that these evolved independently. For the full story: doi.org/10.64628/AA....
CT data provided by Sydney Decker (2025, CMC 27120, OSUM R685) via MorphoSource.

Reptile body armour has a wild back story. Find out here: doi.org/10.64628/AA....

Lizards in chain mail: reconstructing the enigmatic past of dermal armour in squamate reptiles Abstract. Osteoderms, bone plates in the skin, occur widely but inconsistently throughout the tetrapod tree of life. Their evolutionary history remains poo

Lizards in chain mail: reconstructing the enigmatic past of dermal armour in squamate reptiles url: academic.oup.com/biolinnean/a...

A centuries-old debate on how reptiles keep evolving skin bones is finally settled Reptile armour has a wild backstory.

Thank you for sharing. Please also check out our article in The Conversation: doi.org/10.64628/AA....

Our new paper is out! By reconstructing 320 million years of reptile body armour evolution, we settled a century-old debate. Along the way, we found that monitor lizards broke Dollo’s Law in an unparalleled comeback. Check out our article in The Conversation for more: doi.org/10.64628/AA....

Think of it as a digital morphologist’s take on pumpkin carving. Happy Halloween, everyone!

Scary animals rendered from scientific CT scans YouTube video by Museums Victoria

This is it, folks! Your one and only Halloween decoration for the year. It is the creepiest thing I have seen in a while. Watch it in full, with sound on. You won’t regret it. What makes it even better? Every frame is volume-rendered from real scientific CT scans. youtu.be/L_D_iCex16o?...

It was the greatest of all honours to be featured as Museums Victoria's flagship speaker at the Royal Society of Victoria's launch event for National Science Week. Many thanks to the organisers and the wonderful audience.

New study peers beneath the skin of iconic lizards to find ‘chainmail’ bone plates – and lots of them Australian goannas adapted remarkably well to harsh climates. Scientists looking for hidden bone structures in lizards may be a step closer to learning why.

Not only may we just have found the key to an untold chapter in the goanna story, our findings may also improve our understanding of the forces of evolution that shaped Australia’s unique reptile fauna. theconversation.com/new-study-pe...

Dermal armour in lizards: osteoderms more common than presumed ABSTRACT. Skin and its derivatives form the boundary with the external environment for most animals. Despite the vital character of its function, some of i

Scientists have been studying these formidable creatures for more than 200 years, but only now did we discover that they wear ‘chainmail’ in their skin. We found these previously unreported skin bone plates in no less than 29 Australo-Papuan monitor lizard species. doi.org/10.1093/zool...

These Lizards have their own built in chainmail YouTube video by Museums Victoria

Monitor lizards, also known in Australia as goannas, are some of the most iconic reptiles on the continent. In our new study, we looked beneath their skin with cutting-edge imaging techniques – and we may just have found the key to their evolutionary success. youtu.be/RfOK2wWYjLo