Varanus bitatawa - golden spotted monitor

Discovered in 2010, the Sierra Madre Forest monitor (Varanus bitatawa), or Golden Spotted monitor, reaches 6.5' in length. This frugivorous (fruit-eating) monitor lizard is found in the Northern Sierra MadreForest on Luzon Island in the Philippines. Weighing only 22 pounds, this species is brightly colored with stripes of gold flecks. Its scaly body and legs are a blue-black mottled with pale yellow-green dots and its tail is marked in alternating segments of black and green. This lizard spends most of its time in trees and has become a flagship species for conservation in the Philippines.

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Image by A. C. Diesmos and info via#http://www.livescience.com/

Frugivorous monitors are the are the norm in the Philippines who have exclusive rights to these animals with three or four species , while the carnivores monitors are the norm 'in the rest of the world

I was reading about it right this morning.
Is one of the typical example of "criptid" discovered thanks to criptozoology.

This Varanus was very well known by people of Philippines but not known to the rest of the world.

The cause? Simply because it was really hard to find a live specimen since such monitor was part of the daily diet of the people on the island.

- - - Aggiornato - - -

Here is the link in italian.

Unfortunately I couldn't find a deeper version also in english

- - - Aggiornato - - -

Here it is also in english