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In animals, the success of particular lineages can be measured in terms of their number of species, the extent of their geographic range, the breadth of their habitats and ecological niches, and the diversity of their morphological and life‐history traits. Here, we review the distribution, ecology, morphology and life history of skinks, a diverse lineage of terrestrial vertebrates. We compared key traits between the three subfamilies of skinks, and between skinks and non‐scincid lizards. There are currently 1743 described species of skink, which represent 24% of global lizard diversity. Since 2010, 16% of lizard descriptions have been of skinks. The centres of skink diversity are in Australia, New Guinea, southeast Asia, Oceania, Madagascar and central Africa. Compared with non‐scincid lizards, skinks have larger distributional ranges, but smaller body sizes. Sexual size dimorphism is rare in skinks. Almost a quarter (23 …