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New Species of Legless Lizard Discovered Near LAX Runway

Posted by timothy on from the creepy-looking dept.

From an article at Discovery News: "A bustling airport would hardly seem the place to find a new species of reclusive animal, but a team of California biologists recently found a shy new species of legless lizard living at the end of a runway at Los Angeles International Airport. What’s more, the same team discovered three additional new species of these distinctive, snake-like lizards that are also living in some inhospitable-sounding places for wildlife: at a vacant lot in downtown Bakersfield, among oil derricks in the lower San Joaquin Valley and on the margins of the Mojave desert." Here's some more information in the form of a press release from Cal State Fullerton, home to James Parham, one of the discoverers.

6 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. Snakes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    They're called snakes.

    1. Re:Snakes by filthpickle · · Score: 5, Informative
      In case anyone else wonders and doesn't want to RTFA.

      The lizards are distinguishable from their slithery relatives based on one or more of the following: eyelids, external ear openings, lack of broad belly scales and/or a very long tail. Snakes, conversely, have a long body and a short tail.

  2. Legless lizards? by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Funny

    And thus it begins.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  3. Re:or a snake? by icebike · · Score: 5, Informative

    Your average observer would probably call it a snake and ignore it.

    But its eyelids, jaws and the fact that it can shed its tail in an emergency makes it a lizard, and not a snake.
    http://science.howstuffworks.com/zoology/reptiles-amphibians/legless-lizard-vs-snake1.htm

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    Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  4. Re:Kill them all! by icebike · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They are harbingers of the end times!!!

    Or the harbinger of planes.

    Found anywhere else than beside a very busy freight airport, you might be tempted to believe they have been there all along.
    But finding Four new species right next to an airport (and as yet, nowhere else), you have to allow for the possibility that they
    arrived in cargo.

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    Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  5. Not just lizards by Deadstick · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Miami airport is a sanctuary for the burrowing owl...they poke their little heads up out of the ground and watch you taxi by.

    The open areas adjoining the old Denver airport had a population of raptorial birds that fed on the local jackrabbits and prairie dogs. When the airport moved, the birds moved too -- but not until several years later. Turned out the attraction of the old airport was that the ground critters were deaf from jet noise, and easy to catch. As the next generation of un-deafened animals grew up, the birds moved to easier pickings at the new site.