A newly discovered lizard species has been living in isolation on the far-flung Mussau Island in the Pacific Ocean for over a million years

It’s been roaming a remote island undetected for more than a million years but now a new species of blue-tailed monitor lizard is finally in the spotlight.

The castaway has been discovered by researchers on the remote Mussau Island, which is located in the south-west Pacific Ocean, several hundred kilometres from Papua New Guinea.

The new Varanus semotus Photo: Valter Weijola

Described as a “biological oddity”, researchers from the University of Turku in Finland say the lizard, named Varanus semotus, is the biggest land-living predator on the island.

Researchers do not know how the lizard ended up on Mussau but believe they have been isolated on the island for 1-2 million years.

The lizard can grow to over a metre in length and they have a black body with clustered groups of dispersed yellow/orange markings.

“These islands are full of unique creatures often restricted in distribution to just one island or island group,” graduate student Valter Weijola told phys.org.

“Yet, we know relatively little about them. Even large species of reptiles and mammals are regularly being discovered, not to mention amphibians and invertebrates. This is what makes it such a biologically valuable and fascinating region.”

He added: “Usually monitors like these will eat just about anything they can catch and kill, as well as carcass and turtle eggs when available. While young, Pacific monitor lizards are highly secretive and subsist mainly on insects and other small animals.

“Isolation is the keyword here. It is what has driven speciation and made the South-Pacific region one of the World's biodiversity hotspots.”

However possible threats to the future survival of this species would be the introduction of cane toads to the island and a loss of habitat, the study published in ZooKeys explained.

Scientists have previously discovered a species of giant lizard as long as a full-grown man is tall and endowed with a double penis on the northern Luzon Island in the Philippines.

Meanwhile, this animal was brought back to life by scientists after

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/12172960/Million-year-old-lizard-species-discovered-on-remote-Pacific-island.html