Eastern Mexican Spiny-Tailed Iguana

About the Eastern Mexican Spiny-Tailed Iguana

Ctenosaura acanthura, is a species of lizard in the family Iguanidae. The species is native to eastern Mexico and extreme western Guatemala. The standardized English name is the Mexican spiny-tailed iguana (Spanish: el garrobo del noreste). Confusingly however, an earlier edition of standardized names for Mexican herpetofauna called C. acanthura the northeastern spiny-tailed iguana and applied the name Mexican spiny-tailed iguana to Ctenosaura pectinata, which was called the western spiny-tailed iguana in the second edition. It has also been referred to as the Veracruz spiny-tailed iguana and Gulf Coast spiny-tailed iguana. It is an egg laying species that is mostly herbivorous and a moderately large lizard commonly growing over one meter (3.3 feet) in total length (tail included).

Ctenosaura acanthura was first described by British zoologist George Shaw in 1802 as Lacerta acanthura. The generic name, Ctenosaura, is derived from two Greek words: ctenos (Κτενός), meaning "comb" (referring to the comblike spines on the lizard's back and tail), and saura (σαύρα), meaning "lizard". Its specific name is from the Greek word akanthos (Ἄκανθος), meaning "thorn... Wikipedia →