Iguanas Pulled Off ‘Crazy’ Record-Breaking Ocean Voyage, Scientists Say

Iguanas on the remote islands of Fiji may appear to live chill lives, but according to new research they had to work for it: by floating across thousands of miles of ocean on vegetation in the last 30 million years or so. That’s right. A new investigation of the Iguanidae family tree—a tree that includes some 2,100 reptilian species, from the marine iguanas of the Galapagos to chameleons of the tropics and chuckwallas of the desert—indicates that Fiji iguanas are most closely related to lizards in the American Southwest. Given the vast geographic distance between the two but their relative genetic proximity, a team of researchers concludes that, in the ancient past, a group of desert reptiles hitched a ride on floating debris and never looked back—somehow making it to Fiji and surviving there for about 34 million years. The team’s research was published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “The lineage of Fiji iguanas split from their sister lineage relatively r ... Read full article.