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The La Palma giant lizard (''Gallotia auaritae'') is a giant lacertid historically living on the island of La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain); its habitat ranged from sea level up to altitudes of 800 m. It probably lives in xerophytic vegetation and is presumably an egg-laying species. Generally considered extinct in historic times, there were sightings (including photographic evidence) of a large lacertid in 2007 which may possibly correspond to this species,〔 although these sightings have been assessed as doubtful. ==Taxonomy== Working on fossil and subfossil evidence, this giant lizard was originally described as a subspecies of the El Hierro giant lizard (Mateo ''et al.'' 2001). Later, it was elevated to full species rank (Afonso & Mateo 2003). Specimen remains from La Palma assigned to ''G. goliath'' seem to belong to this taxon instead; if this is correct, they indicate that the average size of this species had been decreasing over the last millennia, possibly due to humans preferring to hunt larger lizards (Barahona ''et al.'' 2000). The recently sighted La Palma giant lizard individual was slightly more than 30 cm (~1 ft) long and had an estimated age of four years.〔 New expeditions to the area of the rediscovery are planned in the hope of finding more individuals and possibly a breeding population.〔(Canary island giant lizard sighting gives hope to local biologists ) EL PAÍS ''via'' expatica.com. Accessed 28/12-2007〕 However, scientists have not had the chance of studying any living specimen and the present fossil and subfossil material of ''G. auaritae'' does not allow for sufficiently detailed analyses of its phylogenetic status. Probably it belongs to the ''simonyi'' clade like the other giant ''Gallotia'' species from the western islands, but whether it actually was as close to ''G. simonyi'' as presumed remains unverified. The reason for this is also that it was only discovered after the present species' description that ''G. goliath'' was not another local representative of ''G. simonyi'', as was previously assumed, but a more distantly related species (Maca-Meyer 2003). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「La Palma giant lizard」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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