New Bent-Toed Gecko Found in "Lost World"
Nocturnal creature spotted in remote Indonesian rain forests.
Herpetologist Paul Oliver spotted Cyrtodactylus boreoclivus—which bears the characteristic curling toes of its genus—via the glow of his head lamp in 2008.
"The eye of the gecko reflects red, so you can see a gecko 20 to 30 meters [65 to 100 feet] away in a tree just by its eyeshine," said Oliver, of Australia's University of Adelaide.
"When we pulled this thing out of the tree, it was like, OK—straightaway I knew it was a new one," he said.
That's because the reptile has characteristics that set it apart from up to 23 related species that live on the island of New Guinea.
For one thing, the approximately 10-inch (25-centimeter) gecko is smaller than the many known gecko species on its
