Researchers digging through mud in northeast India have discovered a new family of legless amphibians in a rare scientific breakthrough detailed in a study.
The family of burrowing, tailless creatures was identified by scientists working for five years in remote Indian states including Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland.
'DNA analysis has confirmed that this is an entirely new family,' S.D. Biju, a professor at the University of Delhi who led the project with team members from Britain and Belgium, told AFP.
'Habitat destruction is a big problem for amphibians worldwide, and discoveries like this prove that we must protect the environment to save parts of the natural world we know little about,' he said.
Biju said that it had been a challenging physical job digging with spades at 250 locations looking for the worm-like creatures, which are about 20 centimetres long and often 25 centimetres deep into the earth.
The new family, the 10th from the caecilian group of amphibians, has been called Chikilidae after the name used by the local Garo tribal language.
'This discovery has shown that northeast India is uniquely rich in wildlife and ecosystems,' said Biju. 'We have to understand more about the region.'
One threat to harmless amphibians in India is from locals who kill them believing they are venomous snakes, the study said.
The findings have published by the Royal Society of London journal Proceedings B.
Meanwhile, a new species of lizard with striking iridescent rainbow skin, a long tail and very short legs has been discovered in the rainforest in northeast Cambodia, conservationists have announced.
Scientists named the skink Lygosoma veunsaiensis to honour the Veun Sai-Siem Pang Conservation Area in Rattanakiri province where it was found, Conservation International (CI) said in a statement.
The lizard was discovered in 2010 in the remote and little-explored rainforest area during biological surveys led by Fauna Flora International (FFI) in partnership with CI, the group said.
'These creatures are difficult to find because they spend so much of their life underground', said Neang Thy, a Cambodian national working for FFI and the first herpetologist to see the new skink.
'Some similar species are known from only a few individuals. We were very lucky to find this one.'
The new species is unusual because it has very short limbs and a tail that is much longer than its main body. Its skin has a refracting quality to the scales that creates a rainbow-like effect in sunlight, the group said.
The lizard was the third new species in the last two years to be found in Veun Sai, following the discovery of a new type of bat and a gibbon.
