tagged w/ rosada
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Had Charles Darwin explored the Volcan Wolf volcano when he visited the Galápagos in 1835 he might have spotted this pink land iguana, a species that originated in the islands more than five million years ago.
The northernmost volcano on the island of Isabela is the only home of the "rosada" iguana, a newly identified species of the land iguana Conolophus, scientists said today.
Genetic analysis of the rosada and other species of land iguanas performed by the scientists show that the rosada iguana diverged from the Galápagos's other iguana populations more than five million years ago, when the archipelago was still forming.
Earlier genetic studies suggest that the split of the marine and land iguana lineages could have occurred as late as 10.5 million years ago, when the archipelago did not have the current configuration and none of the present islands had yet emerged, the paper noted.
"Despite the attention given to them, the Galápagos have not yet finished offering evolutionary novelties," the researchers wrote in their paper.
They called for efforts to conserve the new species before it becomes extinct.Had Charles Darwin explored the Volcan Wolf volcano when he visited the... more
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