CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Researchers who were dropped off by helicopter in a largely inaccessible and remote canyon in South Africa say they have discovered a type of gecko that hadn't been seen in more than 30 years and was thought to be extinct — or maybe to have never existed at all.
The Endangered Wildlife Trust said Wednesday that two of their researchers had found specimens of the Blyde Rondavel flat gecko, which was first identified in the same canyon in Mpumalanga Province in northeastern South Africa in 1991 only to not be seen again.
Mystery surrounded the little lizard over the next three decades — was it extinct or were the two male specimens originally found actually just juveniles from another gecko species, as some suggested?
Researchers Darren Pietersen and John Davies returned to the same site last month determined to find the Blyde Rondavel flat gecko again and solve the conservation conundrum that had rankled Pietersen.
Because the Blyde Rondavel gecko hadn't been recorded for more than 10 years, it was considered a ''lost'' species. The International Union for Conservation of Nature, the authority on threatened species, listed it as data deficient, meaning not enough was known to say for sure if it was extinct.
''Having a species that is data deficient annoys me," said Pietersen. "I've always loved the species that others wouldn't study because they're harder to find or obscure.''
The research trip was two years in the making after they registered at least six applications for permits to go, Pietersen said.
They were dropped off on the top of one of the canyon's landmark circular rocky outcrops, which have sheer cliffs more than 100 meters high that can't easily be climbed and where the geckos were thought most likely to be. It was the exact same outcrop where the geckos were found in 1991.
