Reptilia
plural nounTo save this word, you'll need to log in.
Rep·til·ia | \ repˈtilēə, -lyə \
Definition of Reptilia
: a class of Vertebrata comprising air-breathing animals that have lungs but never gills, usually a three-chambered heart, two aortic arches from which the systemic arteries arise, a bony skeleton in which the skull articulates with the vertebral column by a single occipital condyle, the vertebrae gastrocentral, and the compound mandible articulate with the skull through a quadrate bone, that lack hair or feathers and have the skin more or less covered with horny epidermal plates or scales and relatively free from glands, that are known since the Carboniferous and as the dominant form of life in the Mesozoic, and that are represented in the recent fauna by the snakes and lizards, the turtles, the loricates, and the aberrant tuatara — see cotylosauria , loricata , mesosauria , pelycosauria , pterosauria , rhynchocephalia, squamata , testudinata , therapsida
Keep scrolling for more
Comments on Reptilia
What made you want to look up Reptilia? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible).
Test Your Vocabulary
Semantic Drift Quiz
- Which of the following was once a synonym for fun?
Can you spell these 10 commonly misspelled words?
TAKE THE QUIZ
Test Your Knowledge - and learn some interesting things along the way.
TAKE THE QUIZLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridgedWords at Play
Ask the Editors
Word Games
- Semantic Drift Quiz
A challenging quiz of changing words.
Take the quiz - A Thanksgiving Word Quiz
We are thankful for obscure words.
Take the quiz - Spell It
Can you spell these 10 commonly misspelled words?
Take the quiz - Dictionary Devil
The dictionary has been scrambled—can you put it back together?
Play the game
Share Reptilia