3 New Species Discovered in Australia's 'Lost World'
During an expedition last March to a remote part of northeastern Australia, where few humans have tread, scientists discovered three unique species of vertebrates: an impressively camouflaged leaf-tail gecko, a golden-colored skink and a rock-loving frog.
The researchers were exploring the rain forests on top of the Cape Melville Range, a 9-mile-long (15 kilometers) mountain range located on Australia's Cape York Peninsula, which juts out just south of Papua New Guinea. Surrounded by nearly impassable chunks of granite, the misty region has been cut off for millions of years and dubbed a "lost world," according to National Geographic, which funded the expedition.
"Finding three new, obviously distinct vertebrates would be surprising enough in somewhere poorly explored like New Guinea, let alone in Australia, a country we think we've explored pretty well," biologist Conrad Hoskin of James Cook University in Queensland said in a statement. [See Images of the Lost World Species]
The species have developed some unusual features to adapt to their isolated environment.
http://news.yahoo.com/3-species-discovered-australias-lost-world-172240544.html
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