What type of bearded dragon is this?
Almost every pet bearded dragon in the world is the same species, and “hypo” or “leatherback” are variations inside it. Answer what you can. This check names the species when the facts allow it, and says what would settle it when they don’t. It won’t guess at what your dragon carries, because nobody can by looking.
Once you know what you’ve got
Species, morph and parents go on one profile
- Write down the answer. Each dragon gets a profile with a morph field. Put the species or cross in it, or the plain description from this check.
- Link the parents if you have them. The lineage tree ties a baby to the pairing that produced it, which is the only way a het claim can be traced later.
- Settle “small adult or young central”. Log weights in grams and lengths in centimetres over time, and the growth timeline shows you when it stopped.
How this works
It runs the four steps from our guide to the types of bearded dragons in order. Origin sets the default, because Australia has banned commercial export of its wildlife since 1960 and the pet lines abroad are almost entirely Pogona vitticeps. Adult size can overturn that default, but only on a dragon that has finished growing. The beard narrows it further. And for a vittikin, which can look like a small central, the parents’ record is the only reliable answer, so a record outranks everything you can measure.
The morph half is the table from Bearded Dragon Morphs Explained, read by eye. It reads in the guide’s order, pigment genes first and scale type second, and it hands you a plain description to write down. Colour words like red or citrus are selectively bred lines, not genes, so they aren’t asked about here.
Where the numbers come from
The size lines are the guide’s: a central reaches 40–60 cm in total, and an adult that reaches 40 cm or more is a central. A Rankin’s is usually under 30 cm, and a grown dragon of around 25–30 cm with a rounded head and small beard points to a Rankin’s or a vittikin. The 12–24 month band of 40–60 cm comes from our growth chart.
One thing here is our reading rather than the guide’s. Between 30 and 39 cm neither line applies, so the check treats that band as not decided by size and leans on the beard and the parents instead. Wild answers use the range column of the guide’s species table, and individuals vary.
If you’re not sure, keep measuring
Most “not settled” answers come down to one thing: you can’t tell a small adult from a young central with one measurement. Weight and length logged over a few months will answer that. If it’s a pet from a shop, your care doesn’t depend on the answer in the meantime. Morphs don’t change what a healthy weight looks like either, and the only morph that needs a different routine is the silkback.
This is general guidance from published species accounts, not an expert identification. For a rarely kept species, there is far less measured data than for the central.
- All eight types of bearded dragons — sizes in cm, ranges, and eastern vs central side by side
- Bearded dragon morphs explained — how the names stack, inheritance, and what “het” means
- Bearded dragon growth check — for a young dragon, whether two weigh-ins are on track
- The best bearded dragon apps