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Water Dragons re-defined

From Ross Wellington,
"Here's a couple of photos I took at the Bournda EEC conference earlier this year a Gippsland Water Dragon  I. howitti,
Intellagama howitti
plus one I took of a typical Eastern Water Dragon  I. lesueurii in Gosford the day before I arrived at the conference for comparison.

Eastern water dragon    photo Ross Wellington

The water skink  Eulamprus heatwolei, curiously has a 'double tail', an artefact of an incomplete autotomy.

Water skink with two tails, photo Ross Wellington

Also note that the Water Dragons have at long last been more widely accepted as distinctive from  Physignathus (based on a superficially similar looking Dragon,  P. cocincinus, from China).  Genetic analyses have supported my earlier assignation of the Australian species to their own Genus, proving that the Oz species are genetically most similar to other Australian Dragons which have long been regarded as distinctive generically from the Water Dragons (see attached article)."

Intellagama

Many thanks to Ross for his information and fascinating photos.