New Dwarf Dragons Known as Wood Lizards Discovered in Andes Cloud Forests

Three dwarf dragons were reportedly found recently in the cloud forests of South America.

Also known as wood lizards, the dwarf dragons are a diverse set of reptiles that showcase different shades such as neon green or bloody red. Some have scarlet eyes, while others wear armor-like spikes that give them an uncanny resemblance to their mythological namesakes.

The three newly discovered creatures from a biodiversity hotspot in the Andean cloud forests of Peru and Ecuador raise the number of the species to 15 as scientists submitted research on them to the journal Zookeys.

"Wood lizards are fairly large and conspicuous, so it's interesting that roughly half of the currently recognized species have been discovered in the last 10 years," said Kevin de Queiroz, Torres-Carvajal's supervisor at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. "This illustrates how much we still have to learn about South American reptiles."

The first of the dwarf dragons found is the Enyalioides altotambo, or the Alto Tambo wood lizard, named after the tiny village in northwestern Ecuador where it was collected. The males look similar to a baby iguana while the females have a chameleon-like appearance with a flatter and broader face and a tubular body. Their scales are smooth and equally sized compared to other dwarf dragons with spikes and disks.

Another dwarf dragon, the rough-scaled wood lizard Enyalioides anisolepis, was found in the forested slopes of the Amazonian Andes in southern Ecuador and northern Peru. It follows the look of the traditional mythical dragon given its stud-like scales that project outward covering its body and limbs. Its color ranges from black to bright green to brown to burnt orange, Smithsonian said.

The last of the three, the Enyalioides sophiarothschildae or Rothschild's wood lizard, has a slender black-and-brown body with bright green spikes. It has "immaculate white labials and chin" or bright scales around its mouth and neck like a white-chinned cat.

Torres-Carvajal and his colleagues have discovered seven new species of dwarf dragons in the past seven years.