Utility of skeletal mass as a measure of body size in lizards

Appropriate and relevant measures of body size are essential to understand scaling relationships or to compare morphometric data from specimens or taxa of different sizes. Traditionally, body mass and snout-vent length have been used as measures of body size in lizards. Here, we report on the relevance of an alternative measure of size, skeletal mass, which is highly correlated with traditional body size measures and may have more practical value when using skeletal measurements based on museum collections.