Philippines dragon-sized lizard is a new species
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Philippines dragon-sized lizard is a new speciesPhilippines dragon-sized lizard is a new speciesHunted for its tasty flesh, the brightly#x colored forest monitor lizard can grow to more than six feetConcrete Bladein length but weighs only about 22 pounds (10 kg), said Rafe Brown of the University of Kansas, whose team confirmed the find."It lives up in trees, so it can't get as massive as the Komodo dragon, a huge thing that eats large amounts of fresh meat," Brown said by telephone. "This thing is a fruit-eater and it's only the third fruit-eating lizard in the world."Discovering such a large vertebrate species is extremely rare, Brown said. The lizard, a new species of the genus Varanus, is skittish and able to hide from humans, its primary predators, which could explain why it has gone undetected by scientists for so long.Biologists first saw photographs of the big, skinny lizard in 2001, when those surveying the area passed hunters carrying the lizards' colorful carcasses, but the species at that point had never been given a scientificConcrete Bladeidentification.In the next few years, Brown said, ethnobiologists kept hearing stories "about these two kinds of lizard that everyone liked to eat because their flesh tasted better than the ones that lived on the ground; this thing was described as bigger and more brightly colored."Hunters who had heard of the team's interest brought a barely-alive adult male lizard to their camp. The team euthanized the animal and did genetic tests that confirmed it as a unique species, Brown said.DNA analysis showed there was a deep genetic divergence between the new lizard and its closest relative, Gray's monitor lizard,Energy saving bulbs, which is also a fruit-eater but lives#x on the southern end of Luzon, rather than the northern end where theConcrete Bladeforest monitor lizard lives.相关的主题文章：
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