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Close-up of a tuatara peering out from its burrow

Reptilia · Rhynchocephalia

Tuatara

Sphenodon punctatus

The sole surviving order of rhynchocephalian reptiles, representing an ancient lineage that diverged from squamates over 240 million years ago in the Mesozoic.

Realm
Terrestrial
Conservation status
LCLeast Concern
Data provenance

This range is an occurrence-derived learning extent, not an official assessment range map. See the methodology page for the complete pipeline. GBIF.org occurrence density (GBIF Maps API v2) · 1° global raster; derived from GBIF per-cell occurrence density, vagrant-trimmed by a cumulative record-count threshold, morphologically closed, small-and-distant components pruned, clipped to a Natural Earth 1:110m realm mask.

Method and version
Evidence snapshot

A sample of openly-licensed occurrence records retained after quality filtering. 8 licence-filtered records across 6 1° cells, retrieved 2026-08-24.

Inspect on GBIF
Retained datasets (6)