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Disarticulated remains of anguid lizards from the latest Early Pleistocene of the Sierra de Quibas (Abanilla, Murcia, SE Spain) are described and assigned to a new species, Ophisaurus manchenioi. Although Ophisaurus is still extant in subtropical humid environments in North America, Northern Africa, and Southeast Asia, the new species is the youngest known fossil representative of the genus in Europe. Analysis of the palaeobiogeographic distribution of the genus reveals that its maximum extension occurred during the Miocene, followed by a northsouth withdrawal, leading to its late Pliocene restriction to the Mediterranean area. Its European extirpation occurred at ca. 1.2-0.9 Ma, after having survived in a few Early Pleistocene refugia on the southernmost Iberian Peninsula. This extirpation is coeval with the Early-Middle Pleistocene transition, an episode of major climatic change related to the intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciation between 1.4 and 0.7 Ma, and which led to the disappearance of the subtropical humid forest biome at around 1.2 Ma. Based on its latitudinal withdrawal, temperature is inferred to have been an important limiting factor for the distribution of the genus Ophisaurus. However, as the climate seems never to have been very cold on the southernmost Iberian Peninsula, increasing aridity or habitat fragmentation linked to such increasing aridity may have also played a role in the extirpation of the genus Ophisaurus from Western Europe during the Early-Middle Pleistocene transition.