Varanidae

The Varanidae are a family of lizards in the superfamily Varanoidea. The family, a group of carnivorous and frugivorous lizards, includes the living genus Varanus, the extinct Megalania (the largest known land-dwelling lizard), and a number of other extinct taxa. Varanus includes the Komodo dragon (the largest living lizard), crocodile monitor, savannah monitor, the goannas of Australia and Southeast Asia, and various other species with a similarly distinctive appearance. Their closest living relatives are the anguid and helodermatid lizards. The Varanidae were defined by Estes, de Queiroz and Gauthier (1988) as the clade containing the most recent common ancestor of Lanthanotus and Varanus and all of its descendants. A similar definition was formulated by Conrad et al. (2008), who defined the Varanidae as the clade containing Varanus varius, Lanthanotus borneensis, and all descendants of their last common ancestor. Using one of these definitions leads to the inclusion of the earless monitor lizard (L. borneensis) in the family Varanidae. Lee (1997) created a different definition of the Varanidae, defining them as the clade containing Varanus and all taxa more closely related to Varanus than to Lanthanotus; this definition explicitly excludes the earless monitor lizard from the Varanidae. Whether L. borneensis is included in or excluded from the Varanidae depends on the author; for example, Vidal et al. (2012) classify the earless monitor lizard as a member of a separate family Lanthanotidae, while Gauthier et al. (2012) classify it as a member of Varanidae. Genera usually included in Varanidae (under subfamily Varaninae according to Conrad et al., 2008)): Genera sometimes included in the Varanidae (under subfamily Lanthanotinae according to Conrad et al., 2008), treated as under the separate family Lanthanotidae by other authors: