What's new in the animal world? Plenty.

A beautiful lizard in the Andes, geckos in India, a family of Caecilians in North-east Asia and Sea Snakes in Australia. First up, the Rough Scaled Sea Snakes in Weipa:

The snake has been given the scientific name Hydrophis donaldii to honour Associate Professor Fry's long-time boat captain David Donald. “Quite simply we would not have found this snake without Dave's unique knowledge of the area. I told him we wanted to survey as many distinct types of habitat as possible and he guided us to the perfect spots,” Associate Professor Fry said. The snake has been given the common-name ‘rough-scaled sea snake' to reflect the unique scalation. “We don't know why it has been evolutionarily selected to have such unique scalation, but we will next study its ecology to learn more about it.”

Next the Caecilians:

These amphibians live below the soil and their discovery was after extensive research of five years. “The new family of amphibians from northeast India has ancient links to Africa,” said a study done by SD Biju of University of Delhi with co-researchers from the Natural History Museum, London and Vrije University, Brussels. Biju said the remarkable discovery came following an unprecedented fieldwork effort of soil-digging surveys in about 250 localities spread over five years (2006-2010) in various parts of every Northeast Indian states (Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Sikkim and Darjeeling district of West Bengal). “The work is the most extensive systematic program of dedicated caecilian surveys ever attempted”. The legless amphibians lead a secretive lifestyle under soil making it extremely challenging to find them. They are reclusive and can be seen normally during rainy days. It is believed that they separated from other species of caecilians more than 140 million years ago at the break-up of the southern continents (Gondwana). Their DNA was tested to reach this conclusion.

And then there is the new Geckos of Asia:

A new species of gecko, first found on a wall at Junagadh’s Vagheshwari Mata Temple, in the Girnar Hills, has earned Gujarat the distinction of having a lizard named after it. But those who discovered the gecko say the state may host more new species while simultaneously warning human activity, especially tourism, could increase pressure on habitats. The Hemidactylus Gujaratensis — which typically measures a little shorter than five-inches in length — was found in October 2007 by Raju Vyas and Sunny Patil, who are both members of one of India’s most prestigious nature organisations, the Bombay Natural History Society.

Lastly the newest lizard from the Andes:

Germán Chávez and Diego Vásquez from the Centro de Ornitología y Biodiversidad (CORBIDI) in Peru have discovered a new colorful lizard which they named Potamites montanicola, or “mountain dweller”. The new species was found in Cordillera de Vilcabamba and Apurimac river valley, the Cusco Region of Peru at altitude ranging from 1,600 to 2,100 meters. Their study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys. “The new discovery raises some questions”, say the authors. This is the only member of the genus known to live at such altitude. It is yet unknown what biological mechanisms help the lizard to survive in this harsh environment, much colder than what it’s relatives in the genus prefer. Scientists also believe the lizard may be nocturnal, which raises the question of how it maintains its body temperature during night time. In some cases, individuals were observed swimming in streams, which is rather unusual behavior for the members this genus.