1.5 Euro La Gomera giant lizard

One of the rarest and most endangered reptiles on Earth is found on the island of La Gomera, a small island in the Canary Islands archipelago. The giant lizard of La Gomera is an endemic species that was thought to be extinct until, at the end of the last century, and thanks to the testimony of some locals who claimed to have seen it, it was rediscovered by a team of zoologists from the University of La Laguna. It is called bravoana in honour of the Canarian paleontologist and geologist Telesforo Bravo.
Since then, its breeding in captivity has, for the time being, saved the species. It is seriously threatened both by its limited geographical distribution (barely two hectares of land) and by the feral cats that can hunt them and the rats that can devour their egg clutches.
The back is dark brown, grey, sometimes black; the belly is pale whitish, with yellowish-brown markings on the sides, not very visible in some specimens. Its diet is mainly herbivorous, although it may also feed on invertebrates and carrion. This lizard, endemic to the island of La Gomera, is about 50 centimetres long without counting the tail and weighs about 300 g, although in the past, as with other saurian species in the Canary Islands, there were larger lizards, as indicated by the fossils found.
There are currently two populations of this reptile, one in the Giant Lizard Recovery Centre on the island of La Gomera (where it is bred in captivity and specimens are successfully reintroduced into the wild) and the other in its natural habitat in and around the La Merica cliff, located in the municipality of Valle Gran Rey, an arid area with rocky terrain.