Giant lizard discovered in the Philippines

[April 20, 2010]  MANILA, Philippines (AP) -- 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, according to a study released Wednesday.

The 6.5-foot (2-meter) -long 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 90 miles (150 kilometers) 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," Luke Welton, a graduate student at the University of Kansas and one of the co-authors of the study, said in a statement.

It is 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 emphasized 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 e-mail interview that it was an "incredible find."

"This is truly a spectacular discovery," Pianka 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," he said.

[Associated Press; By JIM GOMEZ]

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