Lizards and Snakes Returns to Museum of Natural History 3/6

The real monsters, dragons, and basilisks are back! More than 60 live lizards and snakes from five continents in exquisitely prepared habitats. In addition to the live animals, the exhibit uses interactive stations, significant fossils, and an award-winning video to acquaint visitors with the world of the Squamata, the group that includes lizards and snakes. Vistors can learn about ballistic tongues of chameleons, how a basilisk escapes from predators by running across water, amazing camouflage of Madagascar geckos, the 3-D thermal vision of rattlesnakes and boas, spitting cobra fangs, blood-squirting Horned Lizards, flying snakes and lizards, and other gravity-defying squamates.

Approximately 8,000 species of lizards and snakes have been recognized and new species continue to be discovered. In Lizards & Snakes: Alive! visitors will see 26 species, including crowd favorites such as the Gila Monster, Eastern Water Dragon, Green Basilisk, Veiled Chameleon, Blue-tongued Skink, Rhinoceros Iguana, Eastern Green Mamba, and a fourteen-foot Burmese Python, The Water Monitor habitat is equipped with a Web camera enabling virtual visitors around the globe to observe the daily behavior of one of the largest living species of lizard on Earth.
One case in the exhibition includes four species of geckos: Madagascan Giant Day Geckos, Common Leaf-tailed geckos, Lined Leaf-tailed Geckos, and Henkel's Leaf-tailed Geckos. The case is equipped with cameras located in two different viewing stations that allow visitors to zoom in on the animals. There is also a web camera mounted on the water monitor case, enabling virtual visitors around the globe to observe the daily life and routine behavior of one of the largest living species of lizard on Earth.

This exhibition is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York (www.amnh.org), in collaboration with the Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Atlanta, and the San Diego Natural History Museum, with appreciation to Clyde Peeling's Reptiland.

Lizards & Snakes: Alive! examines many aspects of squamate biology, including differences in hunting strategies. One group, the "sight hounds"-about 1,400 species including iguanas and their relatives-rely mostly on vision, not smell, to find their dinners and mates, and use their tongues to capture their food. On the other hand, "nose hounds"-which includes monitors, skinks, and snakes-use a highly evolved chemoreceptive system that collects chemical clues from the environment with forked tongues and delivers them to special sense organs on the roofs of their mouths. Another focus of the exhibition is how snakes, among the most evolutionarily successful vertebrates on Earth, have compensated for the absence of limbs with thermal vision, complex venom-delivery systems, constriction, and flexible skulls that allow them to swallow prey many times larger than their own heads.

Lizards & Snakes: Alive! is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York (www.amnh.org), in collaboration with Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Atlanta, and the San Diego Natural History Museum, with appreciation to Clyde Peeling's Reptiland. The exhibition curator for Lizards & Snakes: Alive! is Darrel R. Frost, Associate Dean of Science for Collections; and Curator, Department of Herpetology, Division of Vertebrate Zoology. The exhibition is co-curated by David Kizirian, Curatorial Associate, Department of Herpetology, Division of Vertebrate Zoology, and Jack L. Conrad, Senior Postdoctoral Researcher, Anatomical Sciences, Stony Brook University. It is designed and produced by the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Exhibition under the direction of David Harvey, vice president for Exhibition.

The exhibition website, amnh.org/lizards, features a link to the "Lizard Cam" mounted above the water monitor case, interviews with Dr. Frost, photographs of the squamates on view, interesting facts about lizards and snakes, listings of exhibition-related public programs at the Museum, curator biographies, and behind-the-scenes images documenting the construction and development of the exhibition. Visitors to the website can also purchase tickets online.

Lizards & Snakes will also feature a variety of fossil specimens and fossil casts. Among the highlights is a fossil cast of Megalania, the largest-known terrestrial squamate, which attained lengths up to 9.5 meters (30 feet). This ancient relative of today's monitor lizards lived in Australia during the Pleistocene epoch (from 1.6 million to 40,000 years ago).
Informative text panels throughout the exhibition discuss a range of topic including how some lizards can survive freezing, the medicinal uses of Gila Monster venom, and the multi-colored sign-language of chameleons. A stunning high-definition video (winner of the CINE Golden Eagle Award) on squamate locomotion reveals how snakes and lizards get around.

Suggested general admission is $16 for adults and $9 for children (2-12). Seniors/Students with ID tickets are $12. Both adult and child members may enter free.

Suggested General Admission, which supports the Museum's scientific and educational endeavors, includes admission to all 45 Museum halls and the Rose Center for Earth and Space. Should you wish to pay less than the suggested admission, you may do so by purchasing tickets at any admissions desk at the Museum.

The Museum is located at 79 Street And Central Park West, New York, NY‎, and is open daily from 10AM-5:45PM. For additional information, call 212-769-5100 or visit the Museum's website at amnh.org.

Curator Biographies
Associate Dean of Science for Collections Darrel R. Frost is responsible for overseeing the use and maintenance of the American Museum of Natural History's permanent collection of more than 30 million specimens and cultural artifacts. Dr. Frost also oversees the Office of the Conservator of Natural Science Collections and the Interdepartmental Laboratory, which includes a state-of-the-art imaging facility that provides analytical microscopy, spectroscopy, visualization, and image analysis in support of the Museum's scientific activities. As a curator in the Division of Vertebrate Zoology, Dr. Frost studies the evolutionary origin and diversification of reptiles and amphibians and has formulated a revised classification for Iguania, the group of New World lizards comprising about 1,000 species in the Americas, Madagascar, Fiji, and Tonga. Dr. Frost recently spearheaded a collaborative study on the evolutionary history of all amphibians that has revised understanding of the world's 6,000-plus species of amphibians. He also maintains the Amphibian Species of the World database (http://research.amnh.org/herpetology/amphibia), a comprehensive, online catalogue of the world's living amphibians that allows scientists around the world to keep track of rapid advances in global amphibian diversity. Dr. Frost received his Ph.D. in systematics and ecology from the University of Kansas in 1988 and joined the American Museum of Natural History in 1990 as Assistant Curator. He is also Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and at the City University of New York.

David Kizirian is primarily responsible for the care of the Museum's collections of non-fossil amphibians and reptiles. His primary research interest is the species-level diversity and evolution of various groups of squamates. Dr. Kizirian received his Ph.D. in Systematics and Ecology from the University of Kansas in 1994. He was a Coleman Postdoctoral Fellow in the Museum's Department of Herpetology in 1995 and worked in the Museum's Monell Molecular Laboratory from 1996 to 1998. From 1998 to 2003, he was Assistant Curator of Herpetology and co-director of the Molecular Systematics Program at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Dr. Kizirian joined the American Museum of Natural History as a Curatorial Associate in 2005.

Jack L. Conrad studies the anatomy and evolutionary relationships of modern and fossil lizards, documenting their morphology and applying these data to phylogenetic analyses in the hopes of understanding the interrelationships of the dizzying diversity of squamates. In addition to working Cretaceous fossil lizards from the Gobi Desert and China, Dr. Conrad also works on the mechanics of snake feeding at Stony Brook University. Dr. Conrad has published 14 scientific papers and conducted fieldwork in Connecticut, Montana, Wyoming, the Sahara, and the North Pole, where he was part of the group that uncovered Tiktaalik (the "fishapod"). He received his B.A. in biology from Drury University in 1999, and a Ph.D. in vertebrate paleontology at the University of Chicago in 2005.

The American Museum of Natural History is one of the world's preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. Since its founding in 1869, the Museum has advanced its global mission to explore and interpret human cultures, the natural world, and the universe through a wide-reaching program of scientific research, education, and exhibitions. The Museum accomplishes this ambitious goal through its extensive facilities and resources. The institution houses 45 permanent exhibition halls, state-of-the-art research laboratories, one of the largest natural history libraries in the Western Hemisphere, and a permanent collection of more than 30 million specimens and cultural artifacts. With a scientific staff of more than 200, the Museum supports research divisions in Anthropology, Paleontology, Invertebrate and Vertebrate Zoology, and the Physical Sciences. In 2006, with the launch of the Richard Gilder Graduate School at the Museum, it became the first American museum with the authority to grant the Ph.D. degree. The Museum shares its treasures and discoveries with approximately four million on-site visitors from around the world each year. AMNH-produced exhibitions and Space Shows can currently be seen in venues on five continents, reaching an audience of millions. In addition, the Museum's Web site, amnh.org, extends its collections, exhibitions, and educational programs to millions more beyond the Museum's walls.