PESHAWAR: Researchers from Pakistan, Germany and Slovakia, while trekking through the rain-drenched foothills of Lower Dir in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, have discovered a rare grass skink that had remained one of herpetology’s greatest mysteries since it was first recorded in Afghanistan.
A press release said that Dr Rafaqat Masroor, who is also the Curator of the Pakistan Museum of Natural History, was part of the team of scientists.In the spring of 1972, high in the rugged, sun-baked valleys of eastern Afghanistan, a researcher named Clas Naumann picked up a small, striped lizard basking on a rock face. He tagged it, packed it away and sent it to a museum in Germany.
For the next 50 years, that single preserved specimen sat in a glass jar like a forgotten cold case.The elusive reptile had puzzled herpetologists for decades after its only known sighting in Afghanistan.
According to a new study, recently accepted for publication and currently in the production stage, the Afghanistan and Lower Dir populations represent a distinct species within the genus Heremites.The proposed name of the new species is Heremites afghanicus, with “Afghan grass skink” or “Dir grass skink” suggested as its English common name.
“Now the solitary lizard had been found more than 700 kilometres away from its nearest known relatives, marooned on the wrong side of vast desert basins and the towering peaks of the Hindu Kush,” the study reads.
Scientists debated for decades whether it was a lost wanderer, a misidentified local species or a ghostly remnant of an ancient past.Externally, the skinks resemble populations found farther west, particularly in Iran. This similarity initially obscured their evolutionary distinctiveness.
“These lizards managed to hide in plain sight for decades,” explained the lead authors, Dr Daniel Jablonski of Comenius University in Bratislava and Dr Rafaqat Masroor of the Pakistan Museum of Natural History.
“In the field, they look remarkably like the population from Iran. But when we unlocked their genetic code through in-depth morphological and genetic analyses, the story changed completely.”
Using advanced multi-locus DNA sequencing, the team discovered that the Afghan/Dir grass skink is not merely a stray population. Genetic sequence comparisons revealed mitochondrial DNA divergence rates ranging from 15.8 to 21 per cent compared with related Western Palearctic species.
The genetic data showed that Heremites afghanicus diverged from its western relatives during the Late Miocene epoch. Isolated in the deep river valleys and rocky slopes where the Palearctic and Oriental regions overlap, the skink quietly followed its own evolutionary path.
The recognition of H. afghanicus demonstrates the continuing value of natural history collections.A specimen preserved for half a century provided the historical evidence needed to connect an isolated Afghan record with a newly documented population in Pakistan.
Together, museum research, field surveys and molecular analyses revealed that the skink was not simply a geographically isolated population but part of an independently evolving lineage.Because the skink’s habitat spans Lower Dir in Pakistan and Nangarhar in Afghanistan, protecting the species will require cross-border ecological cooperation and the sharing of scientific data, paving the way for the establishment of a cross-border ecological sanctuary.
