FRANCE: Three new “dwarf dragons” have been discovered in Peru and Ecuador: the Alto Tambo wood lizard (Enyalioides altotambo), rough-scaled wood lizard (E. anisolepis), and Rothschild’s wood lizard (E. sophiarothschildae).
These lizards—commonly called wood lizards—are among the largest and most colorful lizards in South America. The addition of these three species brings the total number of known wood lizard species to 15, almost twice as many known species in 2006.
The discoverers’ findings were published in the journal ZooKeys.
The first E. altotambo specimen was found in Ecuador in November 2005, in the village of Alto Tambo. It looked like the related species E. oshaughnessyi, except for the fact that it had smoother scales and brown eyes with gold-ringed pupils instead of bright red eyes.
But the researchers couldn’t confirm that it was a new species until they found another specimen—which took five years because the area where the lizards are from isn’t considered safe for field research due to political unrest.
