By Susan Milius
A newly discovered species joins a close relative in sharing the title of world’s smallest lizard. Sixteen millimeters long from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail, the new species, Sphaerodactylus ariasae, darts through moist leaf litter in a small area of the Dominican Republic. Its discoverers, S. Blair Hedges of Pennsylvania State University in State College and Richard Thomas of the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan, proclaim their new find to be a sister species of the tiny Sphaerodactylus parthenopion that Thomas found in the British Virgin Islands in 1965.
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When it comes to length, “they’re in a dead heat,” says Hedges. He and Thomas found the new lizard on the southernmost tip of Hispaniola and on nearby Beata Island.