Sand goanna

The sand goanna (Varanus gouldii) is a species of large Australian monitor lizard, also known as Gould's monitor, sand monitor, or racehorse goanna. John Edward Gray described the species in 1838 as Hydrosaurus gouldii, noting the source of the type specimen as "New Holland" and distinguishing the new varanid by "two yellow streaks on the sides of the neck" and small flat scales at the orbits. An earlier description, Tupinambis endrachtensis Péron, F. 1807, was determined as likely to refer to this animal, but the epithet gouldii was conserved and a new specimen designated as the type. This neotype was obtained in 1997 at the near coastal Western Australian suburb of Karrakatta, and placed with the British Museum of Natural History. The decision of a nomenclatural commission (ICZN) was to issue an opinion suppressing the earlier names, Tupinambis endrachtensis and Hydrosaurus ocellarius Blyth, 1868, that were unsatisfactory to some who had commented on the case, but provided taxonomic certainty for future revisions of the associated taxa. The specific name is assumed to be a Latinised form of an associate of the describing author, the ornithologist John Gould, who was actively assembling specimens of fauna from Australia but is not thought to have any direct connection to this species. In some Aboriginal languages, the sand goanna is called bungarra, a term also commonly used by non-Aboriginal people in Western Australia. In Pitjantjatjara and other central Australian languages it is called "Tingka". Two subspecies are recognised, Varanus gouldii gouldii – Gould's goanna Varanus gouldii flavirufus – desert sand monitor Nota bene: A trinomial authority in parentheses indicates that the subspecies was originally described in a genus other than Varanus. A species of Varanus, lizards known as monitors and goannas, that is found in a variety of habitat. Due to the taxonomic uncertainty during the twentieth century the species form and behaviour has included taxa later recognised as distinct species, this includes V.