PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Scientists uncover hidden bone structures in the skin of Australian monitor lizards and it could unlock the secrets to their evolutionary success

Beneath the scales of Australia’s iconic monitor lizards (commonly known as goannas), scientists have discovered an unexpected secret: a hidden layer of bony skin structures known as osteoderms.

2025-07-21
(Press-News.org) Beneath the scales of Australia’s iconic monitor lizards (commonly known as goannas), scientists have discovered an unexpected secret: a hidden layer of bony skin structures known as osteoderms. These structures, which have been long overlooked, may hold the key to understanding how these ancient reptiles not only survived but thrived in one of the world’s harshest environments. 

The findings, published today in the prestigious Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, mark the first large-scale global study of osteoderms in lizards and snakes. The international collaboration brought together researchers from Australia, Europe and the United States, who used cutting-edge micro-CT scanning to examine nearly 2,000 reptile specimens from major museum collections including those held at Museums Victoria’s Research Institute.  

‘We were astonished to find osteoderms in 29 Australo-Papuan monitor lizard species that had never been documented before,’ said Roy Ebel, lead author and researcher at Museums Victoria Research Institute and the Australian National University. ‘It’s a fivefold increase in known cases among goannas.’ 

Osteoderms are most commonly known from crocodiles, armadillos, and even some dinosaurs like Stegosaurus. But their function has remained something of an evolutionary mystery. While they may provide protection, scientists now suspect they may also support heat regulation, mobility and calcium storage during reproduction. 

This new research reveals that osteoderms are far more widespread in lizards than previously thought, occurring in nearly half of all lizard species worldwide – an 85% increase on earlier estimates. 

At the heart of this discovery lies the power of museum collections. Scientific institutions like Museums Victoria Research Institute play a critical role in preserving biodiversity through time, enabling researchers to study species long after they were collected. Many of the specimens used in this study were decades, and in some cases over 120 years old, but advances in imaging technology enabled scientists to uncover new insights without harming the original material. These collections are not just archives, they’re active tools for scientific discovery. 

‘What’s so exciting about this finding is that it reshapes what we thought we knew about reptile evolution,’ said Dr Jane Melville, Museums Victoria Research Institute Senior Curator of Terrestrial Vertebrates. ‘It suggests that these skin bones may have evolved in response to environmental pressures as lizards adapted to Australia’s challenging landscapes.’ 

Until now, the presence of osteoderms in monitor lizards was considered rare and mostly confined to the famed Komodo dragon. But the discovery of their widespread presence across Australo-Papuan goannas opens up new questions about how these lizards adapted, survived and diversified across the continent. 

This landmark study not only tells a new chapter in the story of Australia’s goannas, it provides a powerful new dataset for exploring how skin, structure, and survival have intertwined across millions of years of evolution. 

YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfOK2wWYjLo

END


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Teenage diaries from Stalin’s Russia reveal boys’ struggles with love, famine and Soviet pressure to achieve

2025-07-20
University of Cambridge media release   Teenage diaries from Stalin’s Russia reveal boys’ struggles with love, famine and Soviet pressure to achieve   UNDER STRICT EMBARGO UNTIL 19:01 US EDT ON SUNDAY 20TH JULY 2025 / 00:01 UK TIME (BST) ON MONDAY 21ST JULY 2025   Overlooked diaries written by teenage boys in pre-war Soviet Russia reveal relatable perspectives on love, lust, boredom, pressure to succeed and trying to fit in; but also experience of famine, exile and conscription ...

Patient care technology disruptions associated with the CrowdStrike outage

2025-07-19
About The Study: This cross-sectional study of U.S. hospitals found that a widespread technology outage after a faulty cyber security software update on July 19, 2024, was associated with outages in patient-facing network services integral to care delivery. These findings suggest that internet measurement techniques may be useful for surveillance and study of critical digital health care infrastructure.  Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Jeffrey L. Tully, MD, email jtully@health.ucsd.edu. To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ (doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.30226) Editor’s ...

New jab protects babies from serious lung infection, study shows

2025-07-18
Vaccination of pregnant women has been linked to a drop in newborns being admitted to hospital with a serious lung infection, research suggests. Researchers found the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine, introduced across the UK in late summer 2024, led to a 72 per cent reduction in babies hospitalised with the virus if mothers were vaccinated. The findings are the first to show the real-world effectiveness of the vaccine in pregnant women in the UK. Uptake of the jab among pregnant women could help to limit the number of sick babies each winter, reducing hospital pressures, experts say. RSV is a common virus that causes coughs and colds but can lead to ...

July Tip Sheet from Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center

2025-07-18
JULY 2025 TIP SHEET Blood Cancer Expanding Donor Pool for Stem Cell Transplant Patients Blood cancer patients who have struggled to find a donor match for transplantation now have more options, according to new research from Sylvester. The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, showed that patients can achieve good outcomes with a partial match drawn from the national public donor registry when they are treated with the immune-suppressing drug cyclophosphamide. These findings should expand the donor pool for patients struggling to find a full match, said Antonio Jimenez Jimenez, M.D., physician-scientist and senior study author. Pap ...

Current application status and innovative development of surgical robot

2025-07-18
Each year, numerous patients worldwide require surgical interventions that could benefit from the precision and safety offered by surgical robots. The standard approach for complex surgeries often involves traditional open or laparoscopic techniques, which may result in significant patient trauma and longer recovery times. In a study published in the manuscript "Current Application Status and Innovative Development of Surgical Robot," a team of researchers explores a new approach to enhance surgical outcomes through the use of surgical ...

Counterfeited in China: New book assesses state of industry and its future

2025-07-18
Counterfeiting tops the list of organized crimes committed worldwide, raking in nearly half a trillion dollars in 2019. These illicit businesses impact consumers, workers, brand owners, state authorities, and the overall economy. For example, counterfeit luxury goods like handbags and watches are commonly sold to unsuspecting consumers and divert revenue from legitimate producers. Moreover, the proliferation of counterfeiting has fueled the advancement of other types of organized crimes, such as human trafficking, drug trafficking, and money laundering. In a new book, a Rutgers ...

Machine learning reveals historical seismic events in the Yellowstone caldera

2025-07-18
Yellowstone, a popular tourist destination and namesake of an equally popular TV show, was the first-ever national park in the United States. And bubbling beneath it – to this day – is one of Earth’s most seismically active networks of volcanic activity. In a new study, published July 18 in the high impact journal Science Advances, Western engineering professor Bing Li and his collaborators at Universidad Industrial de Santander (Industrial University of Santander) in Colombia and the United States Geological Survey used machine learning to re-examine historical earthquake data from the Yellowstone caldera over a 15-year period. The team was able to retroactively detect ...

First analyses of Myanmar earthquake conclude fault ruptured at supershear velocity

2025-07-18
The first studies of the 28 March 2025 magnitude 7.8 Myanmar earthquake suggest that the southern portion of its rupture occurred at supershear velocity, reaching speeds of 5 to 6 kilometers per second. In their paper published in The Seismic Record, seismologists Lingling Ye, Thorne Lay and Hiroo Kanamori share new details about the devastating earthquake, which caused widespread and severe damage in Myanmar and neighboring countries such as Thailand, with more than 5,000 confirmed casualties. The earthquake ruptured about ...

Curved fault slip captured on CCTV during Myanmar earthquake

2025-07-18
Dramatic CCTV video of fault slip during a recent large earthquake in Myanmar thrilled both scientists and casual observers when it was posted to YouTube. But it was on his fifth or sixth viewing, said geophysicist Jesse Kearse, that he spotted something even more exciting. When Kearse and his colleague Yoshihiro Kaneko at Kyoto University analyzed the video more carefully, they concluded that it had captured the first direct visual evidence of curved fault slip. Earthquake geologists often observe curved slickenlines, the scrape marks created ...

Collaboration rewarded for work to further deployment of batteries in emerging economies

2025-07-18
Technology developed at Swansea University has won funding to help deliver better battery systems to Sub-Saharan Africa. The StamiNa – Sustainable Transport and Affordable Mobility through Innovation in Na-ion technology project—led by Swansea University in partnership with Coventry University, Batri Ltd, Strathmore University (Kenya), AceOn Group, and Federal University of Technology Owerri (Nigeria)—is one of five collaborations to receive valuable investment from the Faraday Institution. The projects all seek to optimise and validate battery systems to maximise performance and improve efficiency and lifetime. In doing so, they will advance the technologies a ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Current and recommended diets in the USA have embedded forced labor risk

AI breakthrough helps astronomers spot cosmic events with just a handful of examples

New vaccine shows promise against typhoid and invasive salmonella in first human trial

Engineered “natural killer” cells could help fight cancer

New 3D printing method ‘grows’ ultra-strong materials

Lizard genetics provide new perspective on evolution

Can a Stevia-derived sweetener improve hair loss treatment?

Method to assess the status of wild reindeer may help with conservation efforts

Do imported cut flowers spread livestock viruses?

Does prior incarceration contribute to poor health later in life?

Could slime mold microbes be a source of potent antimicrobials?

Record-breaking 2024 Amazon fires drive unprecedented carbon emissions and ecosystem degradation

Birds thrive despite pollution from ‘forever’ chemicals

Deadwood brings wild orchids to life

Changes in gut microbiota influence which patients get AIG-related neuroendocrine tumors

Medicaid expansion linked to improved long-term survival in cancer patients

Women with surgical menopause may exit workforce earlier, but hormone therapy could help

Trailblazing Young Scientists honored with $250,000 prizes at Blavatnik National Awards Gala

Revolutionary blood test for ME / Chronic Fatigue unveiled

Calorie labelling linked to 2% average reduction in energy content of menu items

Widely prescribed opioid painkiller tramadol not that effective for easing chronic pain

Exercise snacks may boost cardiorespiratory fitness of physically inactive adults

15,000 women a year with breast cancer could benefit from whole genome sequencing, say researchers

Study highlights risks of Caesarean births to future pregnancies

GLP-1 agonists pose emerging challenge for PET-CT imaging, study finds

Scripps Research scientists unlock new patterns of protein behavior in cell membranes

Panama Canal may face frequent extreme water lows in coming decades

Flash Joule heating lights up lithium extraction from ores

COMBINEDBrain and MUSC announce partnership to establish biorepository for pediatric cerebrospinal fluid and CNS tissue bank

Questionable lead reporting for drinking water virtually vanished after Flint water crisis, study reveals

[Press-News.org] Scientists uncover hidden bone structures in the skin of Australian monitor lizards and it could unlock the secrets to their evolutionary success
Beneath the scales of Australia’s iconic monitor lizards (commonly known as goannas), scientists have discovered an unexpected secret: a hidden layer of bony skin structures known as osteoderms.