Scaly creature — named for famed secret agent — discovered as new species in Jamaica
UPDATE: This story was updated to include a Temple University news release.
The original story continues below.
As Ian Fleming put pen to paper and started the tale of an adventurous special agent tasked with saving Britain, he needed to find a name.
He looked around his Jamaica home, called Goldeneye, and saw a book on the shelf about local birds in the Caribbean. It was perfect.
“When I wrote the first one, in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man whom things happened …,” Fleming told The New Yorker in an interview published in 2012. “One of the bibles of my youth was ‘Birds of the West Indies,’ by James Bond, a well-known ornithologist, and when I was casting about for a name for my protagonist I thought, My God, that’s the dullest name I’ve ever heard, so I appropriated it. Now the dullest name in the world has become an exciting one. Mrs. Bond once wrote me a letter thanking me for using it.”
The Bond name went on to have a life of its own, becoming synonymous with spies, British intelligence and Daniel Craig.
Now, 007 shares his name with a new face — a new species of lizard.
Celestus jamesbondi, or the James Bond forest lizard, was collected decades ago by researchers on the north-central coast of Jamaica, according to a study published Dec. 16 in the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa.
The lizard was found hiding under boards, rocks, logs and rotting palms during the day, and on top of rocks at night, according to the study.
The lizards were kept in museum collections until new analysis showed they belonged to a distinct species, researchers said.
The James Bond forest lizards are about 2.8 inches long with a thick, cylindrical tail, according to the study.
They are covered in small scales, some of which make the neck look dotted and others that form chevron patterns, researchers said.
The lizards have a generally darker brown back with a lighter tan underside, according to the study, with splotches of darker, nearly black scales.
The James Bond lizard is just one of 35 new species in the forest lizard family identified in the same study from Temple University researchers.
While the C. jamesbondi lizard is relatively abundant and adaptable to changing environments, some of its relatives are not in the same situation.
“This work reveals a fascinating diversity of species on Caribbean islands that we didn’t know existed before this study. That is the first step, and next is finding how to keep these species from going extinct,” study author S. Blair Hedges said in a Dec. 18 news release from Temple University.
The new species was found near Oracabessa, Jamaica, on the island nation’s northern coast.
The research team includes Molly Schools and Hedges.
This story was originally published December 18, 2024 at 1:42 PM.
