The group was named by Fürbringer in 1900 to include all autarchoglossans closer to Varanus and Anguis than Scincus.

[1] The oldest widely accepted member of Anguimorpha is Dorsetisaurus from the Late Jurassic of Europe and North America.

They are characterized by being heavily armored with non-overlapping scales, and almost all having well-developed ventrolateral folds (excluding Anguis).

They are characterized by having very long, automatized tails, small and well-developed limbs, and no ventrolateral fold.

In addition, they have non-automated tails (short in Gila monsters, while considerably larger the rest of the genus) in which they store fat.

These lizards have a pectoral girdle, meaning that they must push their swallowed prey past it in order to eat.

The family Lanthanotidae consists of a single species, the earless monitor lizard (Lanthanotus borneensis).

The species is presumed to be semiaquatic, but little is known about its wild habits, as most information and study comes from captive individuals.

The Varanidae are a family of carnivorous and frugivorous monitor lizards, which contains one extant genus (Varanus) with 80 species, including the Komodo dragon.

Some species of Varanidae, such as Varanus komodoensis, or the Komodo dragon, have been found to produce venom.

This is surprising due to their light skull weight and Komodo dragons relying more on their conical, backwards-facing teeth to hold on to prey. [7] The following cladogram is based on the optimal results found by Reeder et al. (2015) in the largest-scale morphological+molecular phylogenetic analysis of extant and fossil squamates as of that year:[8] Shinisauridae †Gobiderma †Aiolosaurus †Estesia Lanthanotus †Saniwa Varanus Heloderma Xenosauridae †Glyptosauridae Diploglossidae Anniellidae Anguidae Many phylogenetic studies have also recovered the extinct mosasaurs within Anguimorpha.