Saint Lucia Forestry Stories: Earl Long “Discovery of the Maria Island ground lizard”

Earl Long 1980-1985, University of Texas Medical Branch; 1985-2011, United States Centers for Disease Control

Contributed by Earl Long, March 2025

St. Mary’s College, August 1958. Gregor Williams, our Form II science master invited me to join an expedition to the Maria Islands to investigate the rumours of gigantic lizards roaming the island. I had been hounding him about that after I had heard tales about the lizards during vacations at Vieux Fort. The other members of the team were two older students, Pancras Mc Griffin “Blakes” Theodore and Marcellus Martyr (deceased).

Gregor hired a fisherman to take us across and immediately on arrival, we could see large grey and green lizards darting across the sand, upper bodies raised almost upright as they ran using their hind legs, before darting into burrows. Of course, since I was the smallest and ‘most dispensable’, I was sent off in pursuit and did mange to catch a large male without being bitten. This was followed by a smaller brown lizard that we assumed correctly was a female.

The male was preserved in formaldehyde by Gregor and sent to Father Robert Pinchon, a naturalist in Martinique, who could not identify it, then it was sent to the herpetology department at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. Some months later, Gregor received news that it was a new species of ground lizard and was named Ameiva vanzoi; ‘Vanzoi’ after Brazilian biologist Paulo Vanzolini. I have never forgiven the Smithsonian for that! It should have been named A. mariae or A. luciae, I thought. Later, it was determined that it did not belong the the genus Ameiva and  belonged to a unique genus, Cnemidophorus. It is now known as Cnemidophorus vanzoi, the common name, the St. Lucia Whiptail.

We did make a brief visit to the sister islet (Maria Minor) and I remember noticing that the ground lizards were smaller and not as brightly coloured.

I made three other discoveries that day: we saw several large geckos resting on tree branches and these were later identified as the Turniptail Gecko (Thecadactylus rapicauda). I also found a whip scorpion, an amblypygid, under a rock. I had seen this only once before on a roadside, but it had been crushed underfoot. A passerby told me it was called a carentain and was venomous, but I found out later that despite its frightening appearance, it was harmless (see image below). The third discovery was the skeleton of a seabird that had been banded. I took the band off the leg and mailed the band to the address imprinted on it. A reply some days later said the bird was a Sooty Tern that had been banded in Trinidad three months before. It was a good day!

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