Over in another thread I wrote this, and I am really interested to discuss this further, so y'all lore guys who have been around for a while, how do books describe Skinks, especially their size?
My idea was that they were special spawnings or specialist spawnings... made for their special task... like being smaller and specially colored... For example my single ripperdactyl rider is still grey skinned but has unusual purple scales and a purplish hue to his skin... this is to mark him as a ripperdactyl rider colorwise... the smaller size is not my fault (all credit goes to GW) but I found it kind of logical: they are smaller cause so they are lighter... same for the skinks on stegadons and bastiladons... I don't own any salamander or razordon models of the current edition... so I don't know what size the handlers are... but I have one of the old metal salies. The handlers are significantly smaller than normal skinks and miss the scales on the back... so in my fluff there's size a marking for skinks gifted with a affinity for beasts and animals of all kind... That's my own made up stuff obviously. Some official fluff would be interesting to read.
Honestly It wasn't until I started actively playing skink armies that I even realized they were different sizes...
I've noticed the difference between them, but outside the oracle I thought they were well within a believable range. If you notice, the bastiladon and stegadons share some characteristics, like the more "senior" skinks having longer tails. I thought it was a theme. As for the oracle, I assumed the entire trog was out of scale. Like, they wanted to make the troglodon smaller than the carnosaur but they couldn't mess with the kit, so they pulled a perspective shift and it doesn't work on tabletop. Think Cindarella's Castle at Disney World.