At the Museum 



American Museum 5 Natural History 



www.amnh.org 



Lizards & Snakes: Alive! 



Opens Saturday, July 1 



Snakes and their slithering and 

 scurrying friends have always 

 had, well, an image problem. But 

 Lizards & Snakes: Alive! an engaging, 

 family-friendly exhibition opening July 

 1 , sheds new light on these magnifi- 

 cent, much-maligned creatures — lizards 

 and their legless cousins, the snakes. 



Veiled chameleon 



Some 60 live examples of this group, 

 known as a whole as squamates, will 

 be on view, up close and personal, in 

 meticulously re-created habitats with 

 natural features from rock ledges to 

 plants to ponds — whatever makes the 

 animal feel at home, whether that's 

 the Amazon, the Caribbean, or the 

 Galapagos Islands. Specimens range 

 from a four-inch tropical girdled 

 lizard to a fifteen-foot Burmese 

 python and also include geckos, 

 chameleons, iguanas, boa constric- 

 tors, cobras, and more; in all, repre- 

 senting 27 distinct species. 



Grounded in the group's evolutionary 

 history, the exhibition explores how 

 squamates developed so many shapes 

 and sizes, came to live in so many 

 habitats — all but the coldest and highest 

 places on Earth — and acquired such 

 remarkable adaptations as projectile 

 tongues, deadly venom, clever camou- 

 flage, and sometimes surprising modes 

 of locomotion. 



"This exhibition dispels 

 many mistaken notions," 

 said Darrel Frost, Curator-in 

 Charge in the Museum's 

 Department of Herpetology 

 and Associate Dean of Sci- 

 ence. "For instance, snakes are not 

 slimy and are just an amazingly success- 

 ful group of lizards that have lost their 

 legs." He added, "This exhibition will 

 leave the visitor with a sense of wonder 

 at the remarkable diversity of this very 

 large but underappreciated group." 



The exhibition also conveys the latest 

 research, reflecting ongoing work con- 

 ducted by Museum scientists and their 

 colleagues around the world, from boa- 

 and pit viper-inspired innovations in 

 remote sensing to advances in diabetes 

 research made possible by the study of 

 Gila monster venom. 



Numerous interactive stations through- 

 out invite visitors to listen to recorded 

 sounds, zoom in on live geckos, follow a 

 rattlesnake on the hunt, and view videos 

 of lizards and snakes in action. "Squa- 

 mates vary enormously in how they 

 spend their lives," said Dr. Frost. "For ex- 

 ample, how they hunt and capture prey, 

 from using sticky projectile tongues as 

 long as their bodies to swallowing prey 

 much larger than their heads — the 

 equivalent of a human swal 

 lowing a watermelon, with 

 no hands!" 



An activity center for chil 

 dren features more than 

 a dozen hands-on activ- 

 ities, including skele- 

 tons to assemble, 

 touchable skin casts, 



Green tree monitor 



puzzles, and games. Among the highlights 

 is a fossil cast of Magalania prisca, the 

 largest-known terrestrial squamate, which 

 lived in Australia from 1 .6 million to 

 40,000 years ago and grew to 30 feet long. 



The exhibition is curated by Dr. Frost, 

 David Kizirian, Curatorial Associate in 

 the Department of Herpetology, and 

 Jack Conrad, Postdoctoral Fellow, Divi- 

 sion of Paleontology. 



Lizards 6 Snakes: Alive! is organized by the American Mu- 

 seum of Natural History, New York (www.amnh.org), in 

 collaboration with the Fernbank Museum of Natural His- 

 tory, Atlanta, and the San Diego Natural History 

 Museum, with appreciation to Clyde Peeling's Reptiland. 



Lizards i- Snakes: Alive! is made possible, in part, by a 

 grant from The Dyson Foundation and 

 the Amy and Larry Robbins Foundation. 



Emerald boa 



