A turtle makes its way to the sea at La Flor Wildlife Refugee in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua, during nesting season (Credit: OSWALDO RIVAS/AFP via Getty Images) Work on the reptile study – which involved nearly 1,000 scientists and 52 co-authors – started in 2005.
The project was slowed by challenges in fundraising, said co-author Bruce Young, a zoologist at the nonprofit science organization NatureServe."There’s a lot more focus on furrier, feathery species of vertebrates for conservation," Young said, lamenting the perceived charisma gap.
But reptiles are also fascinating and essential to ecosystems, he said.The Galapagos marine iguana, the world’s only lizard adapted to marine life, is classified as "vulnerable" to extinction, said co-author Blair Hedges, a biologist at Temple University.
It took 5 million years for the lizard to adapt to foraging in the sea, he said, lamenting "how much evolutionary history can be lost if this single species" goes extinct.RELATED: Ivory-billed woodpecker, 22 other species now extinct, US saysSix of the world's species of sea turtles are threatened.