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New species found in Qld's lost world

Ten years ago Conrad Hoskin gazed in wonder at a rainforest perched atop a range surrounded by a fortress of massive boulders.

He pondered what creatures and plants lived amongst the millions of black granite boulders and trees at the plateau of the remote Cape Melville Range in Queensland's far north.

"It's this fortress with these walls of boulder fields, and I don't quite know how but it's actually got rainforest growing on soil up on top," the biologist told AAP.


The Cape Melville Rainbow Skink, a lizard specie found by Dr Conrad Hoskin on his last expedition. Source: Conrad Hoskin


"I don't think anybody had ever been exploring up there.

"I thought to myself: `there must be something good up there'."

His instincts were right, although it would be another decade before he would explore the summit, which has since been dubbed the lost world.


The rainforest plateau on top of Cape Melville Range. Photo: Conrad Hoskin


Dr Hoskin and a National Geographic team last year made three trips to the top - by helicopter - and found five new species previously unknown to science.

This week the Cape Melville Rainbow Skink and Cape Melville Bar-lipped Skink, found during a December trip, were officially named and listed as new discoveries.

The scientific names - Carlia wundalthini and Glaphyromorphus othelarrni - were chosen by local traditional owners.


A boulder frog. Photo: Conrad Hoskin


Last October, three other species found on the plateau during an earlier expedition - a leaf-tailed gecko, a new species of boulder frog and a new species of shade skink - were officially inscribed as new finds.

Exploring the plateau was a dream come true for Dr Hoskin.

"Up on top you feel like you're completely isolated because you're up in misty, cool wet rainforest," Dr Hoskin, who lectures at James Cook University in marine and tropical biology, said.

"No matter where you walk you always come to the edge and you stand out on these exposed boulder fields - they're huge, they really are like millions of houses jumbled."

Dr Hoskin plans to make another trip to the plateau next year in the hope of finding other new discoveries.

"When you see a lizard or a frog it's most certainly going to be one of these ones that are only found there," he said.