Legless Lizard Found In California: [VIDEO] L.A. Airline Home For Years Of These Snake Look-A-Likes Been Around For Millions Of Years

Legless lizards found in California at the Los Angeles International Airport at the end of one of the runways years after nobody bothered to even name the reptiles or identify them.

The legless lizards found in California are yellow-bellied legless lizards, and their species name is A. stebbinsi, according to Theodore Papenfuss, a herpetologist with the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, and James Parham of California State University, Fullerton.

Stebbinsis are named after 98-year-old herpetologist Robert C. Stebbins. These legless Lizards found in California are one of more than 200 species of legless lizards worldwide.

Some might think that these legless lizards are just snakes, but not quite. According to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the easiest way to tell the difference is to look them in the eyes. If they blink, they're lizards. If not, they're snakes. That's because lizards have eyelids and snakes don't.

In research published this week in the journal Breviora from the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, three other news species of legless lizards have been discovered in California.

"These are animals that have existed in the San Joaquin Valley, separate from any other species, for millions of years, completely unknown," Parham said in a statement from UC Berkeley. "This shows that there is a lot of undocumented biodiversity within California."

There are a total of five different species legless lizards in California. There are more than 200 species of legless lizards worldwide.