Among the armadillo girdled lizards, those from Lambert's Bay had the toughest skin, those from Cederberg had medium-tough skin and those from Namaqua National Park had the least tough skin. The researchers found that whereas most of the lizards had skin that was equally tough, the armadillo girdled lizard had more skin toughness than all the other lizard species. They used the amount of pressure needed for the mongoose teeth to penetrate the lizard skin as an estimate of that lizard's skin toughness. They placed the upper jaws of the skulls on the lizard skins and gradually increased the pressure with a lever press until the teeth penetrated the skin. The researchers did this by mounting mongoose skulls onto a force transducer, a device that measures how much force is being applied. The researchers also estimated the skin toughness of these lizards and the bite force of four different predatory mongoose species that live in these areas. However, among the three populations of armadillo girdled lizards, one of them (from Namaqua National Park) had body armor that was similar to the other thinner-skinned lizards, and the other two (from Cederberg and Lambert's Bay) had much thicker armor, mostly due to extra-thick osteoderm plates. The researchers found that indeed, the armadillo girdled lizard had thicker osteoderm armor and epidermal armor compared to the other four lizard species. One of the five lizard species, the armadillo girdled lizard, is known to have the most body armor, so the researchers measured the skin of individuals of this species from three different locations. They looked at sections of skins from five different cordylid lizards under the microscope to compare the thickness of the osteoderm armor and the thickness of the epidermal armor that each lizard species has. Mouton, at Stellenbosch University in South Africa set out to test whether this skin body armor evolved in these small lizards to protect them from predation from some of their most common predators: mongooses. Researchers Chris Broeckhoven, Genevieve Diedericks and P. However, the function of the osteoderms and the epidermal armor had not been tested. The spines help prevent predators from pulling the lizards out of the rock crevices they hide in.

Cordylid body armor is typically a combination of osteoderms (deep-skin scales or plates), epidermal armor (scales or plates made up of the top layer of the skin), and keratin spines. Cordylid lizards are a family of small South African lizards that vary considerably from species to species with respect to their degree of body armor.

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