Basilisk

Description:

Basilisk skull and lower jaws. Likely brown basilisk (Basiliscus vittatus) Last picture was taken at home to better show parietal crest. I found the skull on a park outing with my sister and friend. Had a suspicion there'd be bones under the trees, and not too long into searching found this skull. The three of us all had different guess, all wrong. I definitely wasn't going to guess basilisk, but I had help with IDing it on iNat. I'm very delighted to have this specimen in my collection, especially because there aren't many readily available references for them.

Habitat:

In Cyprus leaf litter at an equestrian park.

Notes:

This was found not too long after South Florida made national headlines for our "Iguanas falling from trees" due to the cold snap. Iguanas weren't the only tropical invasives who couldn't weather out subtropical winter, nonnative fish were also apparently hit hard, and being basilisks are one of our many tropic invasives it wouldn't be improbable they were hit hard too. Not sure if this skull came from a victim of the winter, but it was an interesting point my sister brought up.