Find the mysterious horned lizard species after more than a century of disappearance

The strange lizard with its horns on its nose, Harpesaurus modiglianii from Indonesia, is completely missing. However, it has only recently been confirmed to still exist.

Indonesian lizard Harpesaurus modiglianii is described as being bright green but can change shades like a chameleon.

The remarkable thing about this lizard is that it has a horn that grows out of its nose. Most recently a surviving Modigliani lizard was found in 2018 in the forests of North Sumatra, Indonesia. This species was last discovered in 1891.

The Harpesaurus modiglianii lizard is very special with horns growing from the nose.

More than 130 years ago, the Italian explorer Elio Modigliani went to a natural history museum in Gennoa with a lizard he collected from the forests of Indonesia.

Based on the Modigliani specimen, the lizard stood out noticeably with a horn protruding from its nose for the first time having an official description and name for the taxonomy, Harpesaurus modiglianii in 1933. But for later there was no Who finds such a lizard.

In June 2018, an independent wildlife biologist named Chairunas Adha Putra conducted a bird survey in a mountainous area around Toba Lake in North Sumatra, Indonesia. Putra found a dead lizard with interesting morphological features, but he wasn't sure what it was. Then Chairunas Adha Putra sent the specimen to Jakarta for identification.

After examination, Chairunas Adha Putra only knew he had encountered a super rare creature that seemed to no longer exist.

Shortly thereafter, the researcher returned to the site where the lizard was discovered and after five days, Putra found what he was looking for one evening. He photographed the lizard and measured the size and shape of its body parts such as the length of the nose and horns.

Using this data, Chairunas Adha Putra compared the newly discovered lizard with the one described in 1933 and came to the conclusion that the living and dead lizard that Putra stumbled in fact was a lizard. Modigliani nasal horn.

Harpesaurus modiglianii was first found in 1933.

The dead specimen of the Genoa museum is pale green due to preservation, but scientists may already know that lizards of this type are naturally glowing green. Its behavior of camouflage and tree life is similar to that of mountain geckos in Africa.

This reptile belongs to the Agamidae lizard family, commonly known as the dragon lizard and includes species such as beards.

Shai Meiri, another biologist from Tel Aviv University, previously pointed out that there are many dragon lizards living in small, inaccessible areas, making the reptile difficult to study.

Meiri also thinks that there are about 30 species of lizards that have never been seen since first described and 19 species known only from a single specimen.