Tuatara - The Surviving Dinosaur
Most of the people mistakingly think that Tuatara is a lizard, while Tuatara is actually dinosaur. Really, it is one of the only survivors of a dinosaur group Sphenodontia that existed about 200 million years ago. All of the other members in this group became extinct 60 millions years ago.
Tuatara Facts
1. The Diet
Tuatra eats mostly invertebrates such as beetles, weta, spiders, worms and millipedes. Sometimes lizards, seabird chicks and eggs are also enter their menu. The bad thing is that Tuatara sometimes (rarely though) eat their young.
2. Dimensions
Adult males measuring up to half a meter in length and weight up to 1.5 kilograms when fully grown. The male has a crest of spines along his neck and down the back. He can fan them out when attracting females or when fighting other males.
3. Teeth
Tuatara have a single row of teeth in their lower jaw that fits between two rows of teeth in the upper jaw.
4. Color
Tuatara’s color ranges from brown to orange-red to olive green and they can change color over their lifetime. They shed moulting (their skin) once a year.
5. Additional Interesting Facts
Tuataras like cool weather - they can live in temperatures below five degrees by sheltering in burrows.
They mate not like other reptiles: the male mounts the female and passes sperm straight from his cloaca to hers. Male Tuatara doesn’t have a penis!
Tuatara have a gland beneath the skin on the head containing a “third eye”. Nobody knows what it is used for but some assume that it may help absorb vitamin D from sunlight or function as a biological clock.
Tuatara keep growing untill the age of 35, and their average lifespan is about 60 years but they probably live up to one hundred years!
Locations of Tuatara
About fifty thousand Tuataras live on Stephens Island in Cook Strait and another fifty thousand are located on other islands in the Marlborough Sounds and islands in the Hauraki Gulf, off Northland, the Coromandel Peninsula and the Bay of Plenty. Tuataras can survive on islands that are free of rodents and other predators.
