The Tuatara, Lizards and Frogs of New ZealandThis is a new kind of nature book. Designed for readers of all ages, it is an introduction in combined text and superb photographs to particular group of creatures - in this volume the colourful reptiles and amphibians of New Zealand. The strangest member of this group, an animal found nowhere else on earth, is the tuatara. The tuatara looks like a lizard, but is is not one. It is the only survivor from the age of giant reptiles - the bronchosaurs, the dinosaurs - and it has remained with us for 135 million years practically unchanged: a living example of ancestral reptiles from which we have evolved. No wonder that it should feature so prominently in Maori art and folklore. Mr. Sharell has for many years studied and photographed the tuatara and its distant cousins, New Zealadn's lizards and frogs, and in this book he gives us the fruit of his work. It is at once an authoritative and richly illustrated handbook, and a striking testimony to his conviction that nature study cannot - or should not - be divorced from an appreciation of nature's beauty. |
Contents
Preface II | 11 |
The Tuatara | 25 |
Island of the Little Dragons | 36 |
Copyright | |
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Common terms and phrases
amphibians ancestors animals Archey's frog archosaurs birds body bones brain breeding brown gecko burrow carved climbing Cook Strait cotylosaurs creatures Dawbin developed digits dinosaurs Duvaucel's gecko eggs embryo feet female flecks fossils frog Hyla frog Leiopelma gecko Heteropholis gecko Hoplodactylus geckos and skinks Genus green tree gecko Habitat Hamilton's frog hatching Hauraki Gulf head Heteropholis hibernate hind legs hochstetteri Hoplodactylus pacificus hundred inches islands in Cook lamellæ land larvæ light little dragon living lizards male mammals Maori markings Mesozoic million years ago mouth native frogs Naultinus Naultinus elegans Otago parotoid glands Pelorus Sound period petrels photograph pineal eye PRINCIPAL REPTILES REPTILES AND AMPHIBIANS Rhynchocephalia rocks scales skin skink Leiolopisma skull snakes snout South Island species specimens Stephens Island Stephenson stones tadpoles tail terrarium toes tongue tree frogs tree gecko Naultinus tuatara vertebrates Wellington whistling frog whitish yellow young tuataras Zealand