New species of Pacific Iguana discovered

22 September 2008

In a new paper just published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Scott Keogh, Danielle Edwards and colleagues have described a newly discovered species of Fijian iguana, which they have named Brachylophus bulabula.

They also have solved the riddle of how the ancestors of these iguanas got to the middle of the Pacific. All of their closest relatives are in the Americas and their ancestors rafted to Fiji up to 13 million years ago. It has made worldwide news.