About 80, see text Trachylepis is a skink genus in the subfamily Mabuyinae found mainly in Africa.

The genus also contains a species from the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, T. atlantica, and may occur in mainland South America with Trachylepis tschudii and Trachylepis maculata, both poorly known and enigmatic.

[1] The ancestors of T. atlantica are believed to have rafted across the Atlantic from Africa during the last 9 million years.

[2] The generic name Trachylepis literally means "rough-scaled", referring to the fact that most of the species, though superficially smooth-scaled, have three or more slight longitudinal keels on their dorsal scales.

[4][5] Nota bene: A binomial authority in parentheses indicates that the species was originally described in a genus other than Trachylepis.