There’s a clade of 13 species of large, unspecialised hornless savanna chameleons, all that remain in the genus Chamaeleo. Four of these have huge ranges in Africa, notably C. chamaeleon, (the grey one above, from Morocco) found all around the Mediterranean on both the European and African side, C. africanus, (dull green, above, from Mulu, Ethiopia) south from Egypt and across the Sahel, C. gracilis, which occurs from Kenya and Ethiopia west across the savannas of central and West Africa, and C. dilepis, (shown sloughing in picture, Otse, Botswana) which occurs virtually throughout the savannas of the southern half of Africa. All reach a good size, over 30 cm, (45 in the case of C. africanus) and look quite similar. One is tempted to speculate they are the ancestral chameleon, but no; a lovely paper by Tolley KA, Townsend TM, and Vences M. 2013 (‘Large-scale phylogeny of chameleons suggests African origins and Eocene diversification’. Proc R Soc B 280: get it, it’s available for free; thank you Kristal, Ted and Miguel!!) indicates that chameleons arose in the Palaeocene, 60+ million years ago in Africa, and rafted twice to Madagascar! There is a beautiful cladogram in the paper, page 5, tells you all you want to know about chameleon origin. And your classic handbook is Colin Tilbury’s ‘Chameleons of Africa’, but that’s not free!
Posted on: Sun, 18 May 2014 15:50:08 +0000
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