Gobiguania is an extinct

clade In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach t ...

iguania Iguania is an infraorder of squamate reptiles that includes iguanas, chameleons, agamids, and New World lizards like anoles and phrynosomatids. Using morphological features as a guide to evolutionary relationships, the Iguania are believed ...

n lizards from the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the more recent of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''cre ...

. All known gobiguanians are

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

to the

Gobi Desert The Gobi Desert (, , ; ) is a large, cold desert and grassland region in North China and southern Mongolia. It is the sixth-largest desert in the world. The name of the desert comes from the Mongolian word ''gobi'', used to refer to all of th ...

of Mongolia. Gobiguania was given a

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical dat ...

definition by Jack Conrad and

Mark Norell Mark Allen Norell (born July 26, 1957) is an American vertebrate paleontologist. He is currently the chairman of paleontology and a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History. He is best known as the discoverer of the first ...

in 2007 as all taxa more closely related to '' Anchaurosaurus gilmorei'' than to ''

Iguana iguana The green iguana (''Iguana iguana''), also known as the American iguana or the common green iguana, is a large, arboreal, mostly herbivorous species of lizard of the genus ''Iguana''. Usually, this animal is simply called the iguana. The green ...

'' (the green iguana), '' Crotaphytus collaris'' (the common collared lizard), or ''

Agama agama The common agama, red-headed rock agama or rainbow agama (''Agama agama'') is a species of lizard from the family Agamidae found in most of sub-Saharan Africa. To clear up centuries of historical confusion based on Linnaeus and other authors, Wagn ...

'' (the common agama). According to Conrad and Norell's phylogenetic analysis, Gobiguania includes ''Anchaurosaurus'' as well as several other Late Cretaceous lizards such as '' Ctenomastax'', '' Temujinia'', '' Saichangurvel'', and '' Zapsosaurus''. A phylogenetic analysis published in 2012 indicated that three other lizard genera — '' Igua'', '' Isodontosaurus'', and '' Polrussia'', all from Mongolia and all from the Late Cretaceous — are also gobiguanians. Below is a

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek language, Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an Phylogenetic tree, evolutionary tree because it does not s ...

from the analysis:

References

Cretaceous lizards Late Cretaceous reptiles of Asia Fossils of Mongolia Gobi Desert Late Cretaceous first appearances Late Cretaceous extinctions Fossil taxa described in 2007 {{paleo-lizard-stub