The skulls of the several subclasses and orders vary in the ways mentioned below. In addition to differences in openings on the side of the skull and in general shape and size, the most significant variations in reptilian skulls are those affecting movements within the skull.

As a group, reptilian skulls differ from those of early amphibians. Reptiles lack an otic notch (an indentation at the rear of the skull) and several small bones at the rear of the skull roof. The skulls of modern reptiles are also sharply set off from those of mammals in many ways, but the clearest differences occur in the lower jaw and adjacent regions. Reptiles have a number of bones in the lower jaw, only one of which, the dentary, bears teeth. Behind the dentary a small bone, the articular, forms a joint with the quadrate bone near the rear of the skull. In contrast, the lower jaw of a mammal is made up of a single bone, the dentary; the articular and quadrate have become part of the chain of little bones in the middle ear. An almost complete transition between these two very different arrangements is known from fossils of early synapsids (order Therapsida).

The dentition of most reptiles shows little specialization in a given row of teeth. A dentition that divides groups of teeth into distinctive bladelike incisors, tusklike canines, and flat-crowned molars occurs in mammals but does not occur in reptiles. Instead, the entire tooth row is usually made up of long conical teeth. Venomous snakes have one or several hollow or grooved fangs, but they have the same shape as most snake teeth. The principal differences between species lie in the number, length, and position of the teeth. Crocodiles among the living forms and dinosaurs among the extinct forms have but a single upper and a single lower tooth row. Snakes and many extinct reptilian groups have teeth on the palatal bones (vomer, palatine, pterygoid) and on the bones of the upper jaw (premaxilla, maxilla). However, only one row of teeth is present on the lower jaw.

Lizards have conical or bladelike bicuspid or tricuspid teeth. Some species have conical teeth at the front of the jaws and cuspid teeth toward the rear, but the latter are not comparable to the molars of mammals in either form or function. (They are neither flat-crowned nor used to grind food.) Turtles, except for the earliest extinct species, lack teeth. Instead, they have upper and lower horny plates that serve to bite off chunks of food.

The teeth of reptiles are also less specialized in function than are mammalian teeth. The larger carnivorous reptiles are equipped only to tear off or bite off large pieces of their prey and swallow them without chewing. Insectivorous lizards, which constitute the majority of all lizards, usually crack the exoskeleton of their insect prey, and then they swallow the prey without grinding it up. Snakes simply swallow their prey whole without any mechanical reduction, although the puncture wounds permit digestive enzymes to enter the prey to aid digestion.

Many reptiles developed joints (in addition to the hinge for the lower jaw) within the skull that permit the slight movement of one part relative to others. The capacity for such movement within the skull, called kinesis, enables an animal to increase the gape of the mouth and thus is an adaptation for swallowing large objects. Apparently some of the large carnivorous theropod dinosaurs (such as Allosaurus) had a joint between the frontal and parietal bones in the roof of the skull. All reptiles of the super order Lepidosauria (lizards, snakes, and tuatara) have kinetic skulls, but they differ from the dinosaurs in that the joint on the floor of the skull occurs at the juncture of basisphenoid and pterygoid bones in lepidosaurians.

The skulls of the lepidosaurians became increasingly kinetic as new groups evolved. The Sphenodontia (which include living tuatara [Sphenodon]) and their antecedents, the Rhynchocephalia, had only the basisphenoidal-pterygoidal joint. The lizards lost the lower temporal bar, thereby freeing the quadrate bone and allowing greater movement to the lower jaw, which is hinged to the quadrate. Finally, in the snakes, this trend culminates in the most kinetic skull among the vertebrates. The skulls of snakes possess the ancestral basisphenoidal-pterygoidal joint, a highly mobile quadrate (which gives even greater mobility to the lower jaw), and upper jaws capable of rotating on their longitudinal axes and moving both forward and backward. Many snake species also have a hinge on the roof of the skull between the nasal and frontal bones that allows the snout to be raised slightly. In short, the only part of a snake’s skull incapable of movement is the braincase.

Nervous system

As in all vertebrates, the nervous system of reptiles consists of a brain, a spinal nerve cord, nerves running from the brain or spinal cord, and sense organs. When compared with mammals, reptiles have proportionately smaller brains. The most important difference between the brains of these two vertebrate groups lies in the size of the cerebral hemispheres, the principal associative centres of the brain. These hemispheres make up the bulk of the brain in mammals and, when viewed from above, almost hide the rest of the brain. In reptiles the relative and absolute size of the cerebral hemispheres is much smaller. The brain of snakes and alligators forms less than ¹⁄_1,500 of total body weight, whereas in mammals such as squirrels and cats the brain accounts for about 1/100 of body weight.