Researchers have concluded that a giant, golden-spotted monitor lizard discovered in the forested mountains of the Philippines six years ago is a new species. The 2.5 metre lizard was first spotted in 2004 in the Sierra Madre mountains on the main island of Luzon when local researchers saw local Agta tribesmen carrying one of the dead reptiles. With the help of DNA testing, researchers determined it was a new species that was closely related to another monitor lizard on the same island about 150 kilometres away. The lizard feasts on fruits rather than carcasses, unlike many monitors - including its larger relative, the Komodo dragon, according to American and Filipino researchers who wrote about the discovery in Wednesday's peer-reviewed Royal Society journal Biology Letters. "I knew as soon as I saw the animal that it was something special," said Luke Welton, a graduate student at the University of Kansas and one of the co-authors of the study. It's not all that unusual to find a new species of tiny fish, frog or insect these days. But Welton and his colleagues said it was "rare occurrence" to discover such a large vertebrate, particularly on an island hit by deforestation and nearby development. They compared their find to the 1993 discovery of the forest-dwelling Saola ox in Vietnam and a new monkey species discovered in the highlands of Tanzania in 2006. "Our unexpected finding of a highly conspicuous new species of a large vertebrate that has escaped discovery in the forests of northern Luzon emphasised the unexplored nature of the Philippines," the researchers wrote. Eric R. Pianka, a lizard expert at the University of Texas at Austin, said in an email interview that it was an "incredible find". "This is truly a spectacular discovery," he said. "Worldwide, there are about 60 plus species of monitor lizards. In all probability, some as yet undescribed species will be found on various islands in Indonesia."
it is a very nice monitor. There's a zoochat thread about the discovery here as well: http://www.zoochat.com/65/giant-lizard-found-142158/ its not actually all that unusual to discover new monitors despite their size. There have been many making appearances over the last few years. Some of the new species are due to splitting already known forms but in many cases it is simply that the archipelago between mainland Asia and Australia is very poorly covered so all it takes is for scientific research parties to do surveys of the smaller islands and, hey presto, unknown species! There have been several cases of new bird species turning up as well, and also species formerly known only from century-old museum specimens and presumed extinct, especially in the east of Indonesia. There was even a new flowerpecker discovered just last year from the canopy walkway at the Borneo Rainforest Lodge in Danum Valley (Sabah), one of the most heavily bird-watched areas in all of southeast Asia!
There are still more undiscovered species here in the Philippines. Hope science will finally identify them.
