Image courtesy of Andolalao Rakotoarison
Joel Kontinen
According to
evolution, species live for a certain time and then they die. But this has not happened
with the tiny chameleon now found in Madagascar.
“A species of leaf
chameleon newly named Brookesia nofy was discovered in a patch of
coastal rainforest, a highly threatened habitat in Madagascar.
A species of leaf chameleon new to science, measuring
less than half the length of a human forefinger, has been discovered in a tiny
patch of Madagascar’s highly threatened coastal rainforests.
Miguel Vences at the Technical University of
Braunschweig in Germany and his colleagues were alerted to its presence by
tourists posting photos of the tiny reptiles on the internet.
Vences’s Malagasy collaborators, Andolalao
Rakotoarison and Alida Frankline Hasiniaina, went looking for it and
collected the first sample.
Leaf chameleons, from the genus Brookesia, are
miniature chameleons the colour of fallen leaves that have been breaking
records for their small body sizes in recent years.
Brookesia nana, for example, described in
northern Madagascar in 2021, is just 22 millimetres long and is thought to be
the world’s smallest reptile.”
Source:
Ryan Truscott 2024. Brookesia nofy: Tiny chameleon spotted by tourists in Madagascar is new to science | New Scientist 16 September.
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