RESEARCHERS from Oxford have completed the ‘atlas of life’ as the first global map of every reptile on Earth.

The project, led by Oxford University researchers and Tel Aviv University in Israel, catalogues the world’s all known land-living species of vertebrate in a bid to look at improving conservation.

It covers more than 10,000 species of snakes, lizards and turtles, tortoises.

Researchers say by combining the atlas with existing maps for birds, mammals and amphibians it has found areas of urgent conservation concerns.

Regions revealed to have biodiversity fragility include the Arabian Peninsula and the Levant, inland arid southern Africa, the Asian steppes, the central Australian deserts; the Brazilian caatinga scrubland, and the high southern Andes.

Oxford University associate professor in biodiversity and biogeography Dr Richard Grenyer said: “Thanks to tools like our atlas, scientists can for the first time look at the terrestrial Earth in its entirety, and make informed decisions about how to use conservation funding. This is not to say that the work done to date has been inaccurate: based on our knowledge at the time, conservationists have often made really good decisions.”