QUITO - A team of Ecuadoran and Italian researchers have confirmed the discovery of a unique species of pink land iguanas living on the Galapagos Islands, the scientist who wrote the report told AFP.

"It is surprising to have made a find of this magnitude in the 21st century," said Washington Tapia, head of research at the Galapagos National Park.

Researchers at first thought that the iguanas, which are pink with black spots, simply had skin pigmentation problems, Tapia said.

The first pink iguanas were discovered in 1986, and after years of research scientists concluded that it was a unique species.

"We have not yet determined the size of the population, but we estimate that it is small because we have only captured 36 pink iguanas for research up to now," Tapia said in a telephone interview.

The pink species can be up to 1.8 metres long as measured from tip to tail, and unlike the other land iguanas, does not have a row of spines running up its back.

"It is a unique species," Tapia said. "But more research is needed to better determine its unique characteristics."

Made up of 13 main islands, the Galapagos Islands, located 1,000 km from the Ecuadora, is an archipelago consisting of 13 major islands, of which 5 are inhabited.

In 1978, UNESCO declared the islands Patrimony of the Humanity with its interesting volcanic geology and diverse wildlife which led Charles Darwin to develop his famous Theory of Evolution.

During Darwin's visit to the Galapagos in 1835, his observations of the varieties of finch birds with different-shaped beaks scattered across the archipelago's some 100 islands formed a key element in his principles of evolution.

As the finches spread around the islands and their populations became cut off from each other, the birds adapted to the food locally available by developing beaks of a shape most suitable to harvest it, his research showed.

However, Darwin did not visit other areas and is thought to have missed the pink land iguana species, whose existence suggests diversification in the Galapagos happened some five million years ago. This is far earlier than attributed to most other Galapagos species like the finches.

Researchers said they have done a genetic analysis, which showed that the pink reptile most probably originated in the Galapagos and split from other iguana populations some five million years ago when the archipelago was still forming.

The new species only seem to live near a single volcano at most 350,000 years old, which means the reptiles that are longer than a metre and up to 12 kilogrammes must have at one time existed elsewhere in the Galapagos, said the researchers.

- AFP/CNA/sf