European Arrival in the Caribbean Tied to Reptile Extinctions

JENA, GERMANY—According to a statement released by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the examination of 43,000 reptile bones recovered from six of the Guadeloupe Islands suggests that the arrival of European colonists brought about the extinction of 50 to 70 percent of local snakes and lizards. Corentin Bochaton of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and his colleagues found that the islands’ snakes and lizards were able to withstand the i