Old salt lizard at home in Darwin's primal landscape

Shaoni Bhattacharya, consultant

(Image: Sebasti?o Salgado/NBPictures)

IF YOU wanted to go back in time to capture a pristine, ancient world untouched by the human hand, where might you start? You could do worse than the Galapagos Islands. This is where photographer Sebasti?o Salgado began his eight-year global odyssey across 32 countries to unearth and immortalise nature's many "unblemished faces".

Following the route around the islands that Charles Darwin took on the Beagle, Salgado caught up with one of the many quirky creatures that live in this evolutionary haven: the marine iguana, the world's only seafaring lizard.

Its tail, glistening here like chain mail against a moody reflection of sky and black laval rocks, is a perfect adaptation to the nautical lifestyle. It is laterally flattened like an oar to help propel the iguana into deep, cold waters to forage for seaweed. Feasting on seaweed could ratchet up your salt levels, but this creature has a special gland in its nostrils that filters out the excess, which is then indelicately sneezed out as salty snot.

Most outlandish of all is the marine iguana's adaptation for dealing with the harsh boom-and-bust cycles of food caused by the cyclical weather phenomenon El Ni?o. To cope, these iguanas not only grow skinnier with famine, but also shrink in length too, most likely digesting parts of their own bones to survive.

This article appeared in print under the headline "An ancient mariner"

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/2a780ebb/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A130C0A40Cmarine0Eiguana0Esalgado0Bhtml0Dcmpid0FRSS0QNSNS0Q20A120EGLOBAL0Qonline0Enews/story01.htm

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