The girdled lizards (Cordylidae) are a family of distinctively armored scinciform lizards endemic to Sub-Saharan Africa. Most of the 80 named taxa are highly adapted for a rock-dwelling lifestyle, though the family encompasses a wide variety of morphologies, life histories and behaviors. The members of the Cordylidae have traditionally been divided into four genera: Cordylus, Pseudocordylus, Platysaurus and Chamaesaura, though a 2001 paper by Frost et al. synonomized Pseudocordylus and Chamaesaura with Cordylus. My coauthors and I propose a new taxonomic arrangement for the Cordylidae, dividing Cordylus sensu Frost et al. into nine genera, retaining all the traditional genera, raising one genus, Hemicordylus from synonymy and creating five new genera: Smaug, Ninurta, Ouroborus, Karusasaurus and Namazonurus. This new taxonomy retains Chamaesaura separate to Cordylus, which was a bone of contention for many who did not adopt the previous arrangement. I have provided a little information on this site about the content and characters of the ten cordylid genera.

An expanded version of the 2011 MPE phylogeny is now viewable here as a fractal tree using the software from Onezoom.org. Rosindell J, Harmon LJ. 2012. OneZoom: A Fractal Explorer for the Tree of Life. PLoS Biol 10: e1001406

Phylogeny of the Cordylidae, from Stanley et al. 2011