A new species of toed lizard has been found by Vietnamese and German scientists at Dai Lanh Cape, Tuy Hoa District in the central province of Phu Yen.

The discovery was reported in the Zootaxa journal this month. The new lizard (Cyrtodactylus kingsadai) is named after Phouthone Kingsada, an animal researcher at Lao National University. Phouthone was co-author of some findings about this lizard but unfortunately died of dengue late last year.

Phung My Trung, a member of the research team, was quoted by VnExpress that many new toed lizards have been found at the cape. Trung added this reptile often shows up at night to look for food and hide into caves in forests along costal areas in the province during the day to avoid the heat from the sun.

“Since the male lizards only appear in the mating season, it’s very hard to collect samples from this reptile to do research. After studying the region in four different periods of time, we just found three male lizards for specimen to serve scientific purposes,” he was quoted by VnExpress. 

The toed lizard is around 94 millimeters long (not including its tail). It has a light brown body with a dark line on the back of its neck and four other dark lines on its body. This is the 29th species of toed lizard identified in Vietnam so far.