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Ancestor: Zootoca vivipara (Common Lizard) 

Size: Up to 30 centimetres
Weight: 20 grams

Dietary Needs: Invertebrates, usually those that live in soil such as worms. Worms make up a large part of their diet. They sometimes cannibalize eggs and smaller members of their own species.

Life Cycle: They are usually viviparous but some at the most South of the range sometimes express oviparity as a rare occurence. They are extreme R-strategists. Although offspring are developed replicas of the adults, they are tiny. They leave the birth canal easily due to their small size and there may be as many as 50 per birthing. Females have limited maternal instinct, guarding her offspring from other lizards for a time while they forrage and grow, but she will abandon them when they scatter too far out of her range of perception. Young and juveniles don't dig as much and are quicker runners. Adults become slower, spending more time digging through the soil. Adults use loud contrast and brighter colours to attract each other as they don't (usually) have to fear being eaten by one another. It's also a sign of good health, drab adults of either sex usually have a problem like disease or stress from an injury.

Other: When forraging dirt movement is caused by nuzzling of the soil and body side-winds to brute force through the dirt. They usually aren't trying to burrow so much as they are trying to disturb the dirt, revealing what lives inside it.

 They are capable of burrowing with their claws for hibernation, preferring rotting humus and other rich organic matter to burrow into. Heat produced by decomposition can stave off frost in a burrow for longer than a "cold" burrow, especially when multiple lizards form a huddle bundle. Glucose enrichment of the blood is a preventative for the nucleation of ice crystals in the lizard's internal tissues when the cold becomes severe.