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Tuatara

Sphenodon punctatus · hard

A tuatara looks like a lizard and is not one. It is the only survivor of the Rhynchocephalia, an order that flourished alongside the earliest dinosaurs and disappeared everywhere except New Zealand. Its closest living relatives are separated from it by well over two hundred million years, which makes the tuatara less a species than the last representative of an entire branch of reptile evolution.

The anatomy reflects that distance. The skull has two complete bony arches, a primitive arrangement lizards have lost. The teeth are not replaceable — they are fused extensions of the jawbone, and simply wear down with age. Young tuatara have a functional third eye on the top of the head, complete with lens and retina, which becomes covered by scales as they mature and probably helps regulate daily and seasonal rhythms.

They are extraordinarily slow-lived. Tuatara remain active at temperatures that would immobilise most reptiles, grow for decades, may not breed until their thirties, and can live past a century.

Mainland populations were destroyed by introduced rats. The species survives on predator-free offshore islands and in fenced sanctuaries, where careful reintroduction has slowly begun returning it to places it had not occupied for generations.

Where it lives

Worml lists the tuatara as native to New Zealand. Its habitat is coastal forest and scrub on offshore islands.

Ranges here are reduced to whole countries for playability and exclude introduced populations — see about the data for what that simplification leaves out.

In the game

Tuatara is rated hard. To solve the round you need to name the single country it lives in. How scoring works →

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