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Around 34 million years ago , iguanas undertake the longest - live transoceanic trip of any tellurian species , sail one - fifth of the way around the humans from North America to set up home in Fiji , a newfangled discipline suggests .
Researchers believe the iguana made the more than 5,000 mile ( 8,000 kilometer ) journeying on heaps made of vegetation , arriving in Fiji shortly after the islands formed . " You could envisage some sort of cyclone knock over trees where there were a bunch of iguanas and maybe their eggs , and then they catch the ocean currents and rafted over , " lead authorSimon Scarpetta , confidential information author and assistant professor of environmental skill at the University of San Francisco , order in a affirmation .
Four species of iguana populate Fiji — including this crested iguana (Brachylophus vitiensis) — but all are thought to descend from ancient iguanas that made a very long journey across the ocean.
Fiji ’s hopeful - gullible lizard are the only iguanas outside the Western Hemisphere , and how they get there has been a long - standing secret . In a new genetic analysis published Monday ( March 17 ) in the journalPNAS , research worker found Fiji ’s iguanas are much more closely related to their westerly Hemisphere cousin-german than antecedently believed , make the journey directly from the West Coast of the United States to Fiji about 34 million years ago .
" That they reached Fiji directly from North America seems dotty , " report Centennial State - authorJimmy McGuire , professor of biology at the University of California , Berkeley , said in a statement . " But alternative models involving colonization from adjacent land country do n’t really work for the time frame , since we recognize that they arrived in Fiji within the last 34 million class or so . "
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One of Fiji’s reptiles — the Central Fijian banded iguana (Brachylophus bulabula) — clings to a tree. This might have been how his ancestors first made it to the remote islands.
Previously , some biologists posited the Fijian lizards — which consist the genusBrachylophus — descended from a now - nonextant family of iguanas that once populated the Pacific . Others have suggested the lizard could have float shorter distances from South America and through Antarctica or Australia before in conclusion stop up in the Pacific .
But these ideas were based on preceding familial depth psychology that did not once and for all show how intimately Fiji iguanas were colligate to other iguanids .
The young analysis trust on a genome - broad desoxyribonucleic acid sequence thatScarpettacollected from over 200 iguana specimens from museums around the world .
The workplace revealed theBrachylophusgenus in Fiji is most closely relate to lizard in theDiposaurusgenus , which are widespread in the desert of North America . These desert iguanas are well adapt to searing heat , so potentially had adaptations to survive the prospicient journey .
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" Iguanas and desert common iguana , in particular , are resistant to famishment and desiccation , so my thinking process is , if there had to be any grouping of vertebrate or any group of lizard that really could make an 8,000 klick journeying across the Pacific on a lot of vegetation , a desert common iguana - like antecedent would be the one , " Scarpetta said .
The investigator estimate these lineages break approximately 34 million years ago — roughly aligning with geologic story of the islands ' organisation . " This suggests that as soon as land come out where Fiji now resides , these Iguana iguana may have colonize it . Regardless of the real timing of dispersal , the event itself was spectacular , " Scarpetta suppose .
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