Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Cue the Game of Thrones theme song! A trio of new wood lizards, creatures also known as “dwarf dragons” due to their resemblance to the mythical beasts, have been found and identified by scientists in Peru and Ecuador.
The discovery, which was reported in the April 6 edition of the journal ZooKeys, brings the total number of wood lizard species to 15, according to National Geographic. Since 2006, the number of known wood lizards has nearly doubled, giving the South American reptiles one of the fastest discovery rates of the past 10 years, the website noted in an article published Monday.
Meet the new dwarf dragons
The new wood lizard species are known as the Alto Tambo wood lizard (Enyalioides altotambo), which occurs in northwestern Ecudaor; the rough-scaled wood lizard (E. anisolepis), which can be found on the Amazonian slopes of the Andes in both southern Ecuador and northern Peru; and the Rothschild’s wood lizard (E. sophiarothschildae), which resides in northeastern Peru.
The Alto Tambo wood lizard “differs from other species of Enyalioides in having dorsal scales that are both smooth and homogeneous in size, a brown iris, and in lacking enlarged, circular and keeled scales on the flanks,” lead investigator Omar Torres-Carvajal of the Museo de Zoología QCAZ at the Catholic University of Ecuador in Quito and his colleagues wrote.
The unique features of the rough-scaled wood lizard include “scattered, projecting large scales on the dorsum, flanks, and hind limbs, as well as a well-developed vertebral crest, with the vertebrals on the neck at least three times higher than those between the hind limbs.” The male Rothschild’s wood lizard has a white throat and black and turquoise-colored scales.
How the new wood lizards were found and identified
It took the research team nearly a decade to identify the lizards due to political unrest in Ecuador, Nat Geo explained. Torres-Carvajal told the website that he was “a very lucky guy” to have been part of the findings, which started with the discovery of E. altotambo in 2005. He noted that it was similar to a related species, E. oshaughnessyi, but with different color eyes and smooth skin.
The rough-scaled wood lizard was found along the border of Peru and Ecuador in 2014, Torres-Carvajal said. “I’m looking at them saying, ‘This is something new, because it has a combination of traits that I’ve never seen before.’ It was almost immediate – immediate and very exciting.”
Pablo Venegas, a taxonomist at the Center for Ornithology and Biodiversity in Lima, Peru who consults with the Ecuadoran museum, recognized the white throat scales from lizards he found in Peru in both 2003 and 2008. DNA testing confirmed that all three belonged to the same species, and a second white-throated wood lizard, E. sophiarothschildae, was later identified as the study authors continued to examine different specimens collected by Venegas.
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