June 9, 2020 at 6:00 am
Nearly 130 years ago,
Italian explorer Elio Modigliani arrived at a natural history museum in Genoa
with a lizard he’d reportedly collected from the forests of Indonesia.
Based on Modigliani’s
specimen, the striking lizard notable for a horn that protrudes from its nose got its official taxonomic description and name,
Harpesaurus modiglianii, in 1933. But no accounts of anyone finding
another such lizard were ever recorded, until now.
This illustration of Modigliani’s nose-horned lizard was made in 1933 based on the original lizard first found in 1891. That specimen turned pale blue due to how it was preserved.C.A. Putra