Sail-tailed Lizard Hydrosaurus amboinensis. Original artwork from Astonishing animals.

2003.
Watercolour and gouache on Arches paper, 345 x 1100mm, mounted but not framed, signed and dated by artist.

Page 150 (Hydrosaurus amboinensis)
If you had visited the island of Ambon in eastern Indonesia before the civil war put an end to all travel in the mid-1990s, you might have been offered a memento of your stay by one of the many peddlers roaming the streets. Either on foot or atop a bicycle, they carry piles of brightly coloured tropical lobsters mounted on boards, and a strange sort of lizard, painted and likewise mounted on a plaque.
This lizard, which appears quite dinosaurian, is the sail-tailed lizard of south-east Asia, a common inhabitant of the banks of rivers and streams throughout the region.
It could even be a prototype of the marine iguana of the Galapagos Islands. This animal,
however, inhabits freshwater, where its spectacular tail may assist it in ascending rapids. Perhaps in a few million years they will have evolved sufficiently to be able to survive in the ocean. Then south-east Asia will have its own seagoing lizard.