Posted by: Loren Coleman on November 23rd, 2008 French
scientist, Ivan Ineich, displays a never-before-seen species of
gecko at France’s Natural History Museum in Paris. [Francois
Mori (AP Photo)] French scientists say they hatched a new gecko
species from an egg plucked from its nest in a South Pacific
island and carried it 12,000 miles to Paris in a box lined with
Kleenex. France’s National Museum of Natural History said it was
the first time a new lizard species has been catalogued based on
an individual raised from an egg. Given the Latin name
Lepidodactylus buleli, the gecko makes its home near the tops of
the trees that line the west coast of Espiritu Santo, one of the
larger islands of the Vanuatu archipelago east of Australia, the
museum said.