A new species of a ground-dwelling lizard has been discovered in Goregaon’s Aarey Colony and Thane’s Badlapur forested belts in Maharashtra. It has been named as Cyrtodactylus Varadgirii or Giri’s Geckoella after a Bengaluru-based scientist Varad Giri. It was discovered 130 years after the last such gecko was discovered. Key Facts Cyrtodactylus Varadgirii or Giri’s Geckoella belongs to
the genus Cyrtodactylus known in Southeast Asia, India and Sri Lanka. It is a member of the subgenus Geckoella, which are small ground-dwelling geckos largely found in leaf litter in forests. Earlier, this new species was considered as Geckoella Collegalensis, but based on morphological characters and DNA data it was described as a new species. This new species is active during night and take refuge under rocks and logs during the day. It is mostly seen moving among the leaf litter on the forest floor. It grows the length of around 6 centimetres. It is also known to live around human-dominated landscapes.
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