Newly discovered, actually means, to be newly identified by current science. The animals have been in there for many thousands of years, in most cases, they are been seen by man, collected by man, killed, consumed, exported etc. Just not identified by current(newest methods)science.



A few years ago I was talking to J Caan, in Sidney. I told him i found several undescribed ozzie monitors, he said, get in line, he has 27 species of undescribed turtles that no one wants to work with.



There are hundreds of newly described herps every year. Science is not on the cutting edge of species identification. In the case of varanids, there are no teams of varanid biologist searching the world for new species.



New species generally are accidental finds by "other" biologists or lay people.



Its also nothing against varanid biologist, they tend to work on known species, not wasting their time with the unknown.



Back to the subject of this thread, there is a huge difference between newly described and how long they have been known of by man. As to whether Jobi has them or not, well he said he had pics. Cheers

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