A natural classification system was devised by Carl Linnaeus in the late eighteenth century. This was a way of arranging plants and animals into groups based on differences and similarities between them. These groups start out as one big group, the phylum , and then are broken down into smaller groups all the way down to the individual animal, or species . The first groups the phylum is broken into are classes .
Lizards belong in a large class of animals called Reptilia .
The class is then broken into several orders and the lizards belong to the order called Squamata . Snakes and amphibians also belong to this order. The majority of lizards then fall into the suborder called Lacertilia . This is where we start with our table below. The suborders are broken into families .