DNA has solved the mystery of where the planet’s biggest gecko came from. But another mystery remains — could it still be out there?
A lizard called Delcourt’s giant gecko has long been one of herpetology’s biggest mysteries — literally.
Presumed extinct, the animal is by far the largest gecko known to have crawled the Earth, measuring at least 600 millimeters, or about two feet, from snout to tail tip. The only example scientists have of the gecko, however, is a singleNow, DNA from the specimen reveals that. Geckos in this lineage repeatedly evolved extreme body sizes on the archipelago east of Australia.
“Compared to all other geckos, it’s monstrous,” says Matthew Heinicke, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. “It happens to be in a lineage where evolution of gigantism wasn’t a one-off event.” Presumed extinct, Delcourt’s giant gecko was nearly 1.5 times longer than the largest living gecko species was nearly 1.5 times longer than the largest living gecko species , also a member of the New Caledonian group.was big enough to prey on birds and lizards, including other geckos. Its toe pads and long claws suggest it lived in trees, though it was probably the maximum size at which a gecko could still adhere to vertical surfaces with its hallmark sticky grip, Heinicke says.
The gecko came to scientists’ attention in the 1980s after collections manager Alain Delcourt found the long-forgotten specimen at the Natural History Museum of Marseille in France. Stuffed rather than stored in spirits, the gecko sports a thick trunk, bulbous head and brown skin with faint red bands. Herpetologist Aaron Bauer of Villanova University in Pennsylvania was a graduate student when he arrived at the museum in 1983 to investigate the newly rediscovered specimen.
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