Experts have long thought that the Victorian grassland earless dragon was extinct, given that there hadn’t been a sighting of the distinctive creature in the past 50 years. The earless dragon is a form of lizard that lacks eardrums and ear openings and measures at just under 6 inches long when fully grown. A small population of the Australian creature was recently rediscovered in a location that is being kept under wraps to help with preservation efforts. Habitat loss and an increase of feral cats, the lizard’s main predator, contributed to their expected extinction. Now, the earless dragon is considered “critically endangered”, and ecologists are hard at work devising a strategy to grow the population. The rediscovery of the earless dragon gives ecologists hope that other species feared extinct can in fact be located again.
Image via Melbourne Zoo
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