A skink is a lizard in the family Scincidae, within Squamata. The family contains a wide range of body forms, from animals with four well-developed limbs to elongated forms with strongly reduced limbs or none externally visible. A long, legless body therefore does not establish that a reptile is a snake.[ref]
Built for success: Distribution, morphology, ecology and life history of the world's skinks by David G. Chapple and others. section 3.2 and Figure7, body shape and limb reduction
A 2023 comparative dataset classified of its skink species as having reduced or absent limbs, using limb proportions relative to snout-to-vent length. This makes the comparison measurable: a short absolute leg length in a tiny animal is different from a short leg relative to the animal's body. Placing those measurements on a phylogenetic tree permits tests of repeated evolutionary changes instead of treating every similar body shape as one inherited event.[ref]
Built for success: Distribution, morphology, ecology and life history of the world's skinks by David G. Chapple and others. section 3.2, 398 limb-reduced or limbless species and comparison with non-scincid lizards
Reproduction is diverse as well. Some skinks lay eggs and others give birth to live young. In the same dataset, about one third of the species with known reproductive mode were live-bearing; that qualification matters because unknown cases were excluded. A family name captures ancestry without requiring every member to share one body plan or reproductive mode.[ref]
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