Explaining global species richness patterns is a major goal of evolution, ecology, and biogeography. These richness patterns are often attributed to spatial variation in diversification rates (speciation minus extinction). Surprisingly, prominent studies of birds, fish, and plants have reported higher speciation and/or diversification rates at higher latitudes, where species richness is lower. We hypothesize that these surprising findings are explained by the focus of those studies on relatively recent macroevolutionary rates, within the last ~20 million years. Here, we analyze global richness patterns among 10,213 squamates (lizards and snakes) and explore their underlying causes. We find that when diversification rates were quantified at more recent timescales, we observed mismatched patterns of rates and richness, similar to previous studies in other taxa. Importantly, diversification rates estimated over longer timescales were instead positively related to geographic richness patterns. These observations may help resolve the paradoxical results of previous studies in other taxa. We found that diversification rates were largely unrelated to climate, even though climate and richness were related. Instead, higher tropical richness was related to ancient occupation of tropical regions, with colonization time the variable that explained the most variation in richness overall. We suggest that large-scale diversity patterns might be best understood by considering climate, deep-time diversification rates, and the time spent in different regions, rather than recent diversification rates alone. [Climate, colonization time, diversification rate, lizards, latitudinal diversity gradient, snakes, species richness].