I saw that story in my local paper! It was published along with a picture of the lizard. Very cool-looking in my opinion.
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Posted on Mon, Oct. 10, 2005
Species of lizard is discovered in the Caribbean
Avila professor finds creature he sought
‘It is indeed spectacular in its appearance’
By MARÁ ROSE WILLIAMS
The Kansas City Star
On hands and knees, biologist Robert Powell dug through the leaf-littered floor of dry forest on Union Island in the south Caribbean for a creature he had never seen.
Keeping a cautious eye out for venomous scorpions, he turned over rocks and ripped open rotting logs filled with crawling critters.
Powell, a 30-year tenured professor at Kansas City’s Avila University was on the hunt for a geckolike little lizard. An amateur naturalist who had visited the island told Powell he had spotted the lizards in these parts of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
As Powell suspected, no record existed of the diminutive reptile. Experts around the world had never heard of it.
But Powell’s find on that morning last June meant he and his hunting companion, Robert Henderson, a curator at the Milwaukee Public Museum, could claim discovery of a new species of lizard — a first for Powell. And according to university officials, it’s a first lizard find for Avila, too.
“The wonderful thing about Bob Powell is what he does with his research,” said Sister Marie Joan Harris, Avila provost.
“He takes that energy and enthusiasm gained because he found something new and uses it to motivate students. It gets them excited about science.”
Powell and Henderson will have their discovery published in the December issue of the Caribbean Journal of Science, and a specimen of the still nameless lizard is preserved at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum.
In the journal, Powell will announce the scientific name he has chosen for their discovery.
Until Powell, who holds a doctorate in zoology from the University of Missouri-Columbia, officially shares the experience in the journal, he is telling anyone who asks about his “spectacular” find.
“It is indeed spectacular in its appearance,” Powell said by telephone from Guana Island in the British Virgin Islands, where he is now studying other reptiles.
Every summer, through an Avila program funded by the National Science Foundation, Powell recruits students who want to be scientists from around the country to take a research excursion with him to the Caribbean. He was setting up such a trip when he learned about the mysterious vertebrate from the Rev. Bob de Silva, a St. Vincent amateur naturalist who was the only person to ever report seeing it.
“The lizard is greenish with bright red, black and white spots that seem to jump out at you when he is placed against a plain background,” Powell said. “But in its natural habitat, it is hard to see.”
Powell guesses the lizard, which belongs to a genus of lizard called Gonatodes, has always lived on the island. In fact, Powell said, “I think that people may have seen them and thought they were some kind of bug.”
Powell’s lizard is tiny — about an inch and a half long from snout to tail tip.
“It’s the size of a big caterpillar or half a cigarette,” Powell said.
There are only about 25 species in this Gonatodes genus, compared with hundreds in most others. For the most part, they are found in southern Central America and northern South America. Powell’s lizard is the first in this group to be found living in some quantity in the West Indies. Still, Powell said he thought, but did not know for certain, that his lizard fit the criteria for endangered species.
He captured two.
“I scooped up a handful of leaves and debris, then carefully sifted through looking for the lizard,” Powell recalled. “The hardest thing was holding it so as not to tear its soft skin.”
The moment of discovery was exciting but, “It wasn’t, ‘Eureka!’ because we knew it was there, and we went looking for it,” Powell said. “But, still it was so cool and very satisfying.”
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