The greater Saint Croix skink (''Spondylurus magnacruzae'') is a

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

skink Skinks are a type of lizard belonging to the family (biology), family Scincidae, a family in the Taxonomic rank, infraorder Scincomorpha. With more than 1,500 described species across 100 different taxonomic genera, the family Scincidae is one o ...

found on

Saint Croix Saint Croix ( ; ; ; ; Danish language, Danish and ; ) is an island in the Caribbean Sea, and a county and constituent Districts and sub-districts of the United States Virgin Islands, district of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), an Unin ...

in the

United States Virgin Islands The United States Virgin Islands, officially the Virgin Islands of the United States, are a group of Caribbean islands and a territory of the United States. The islands are geographically part of the Virgin Islands archipelago and are located ...

. It was formerly present across most of Saint Croix where it was sighted with some regularity, but was largely extirpated from the island by the late 19th century due to the introduced

small Indian mongoose The small Indian mongoose (''Urva auropunctata'') is a mongoose species native to Iraq and northern India; it has also been introduced to several Caribbean and Pacific islands. Taxonomy ''Mangusta auropunctata'' was the scientific name proposed ...

(''Urva auropunctata''). From then onwards, the species was only known from the satellite island of Green Cay, where it is known from a specimen collected in 1964. Further surveys detected only two other sightings: once in 1987 (this individual was photographed, and this remains the only known photograph of a live ''S. magnacruzae'') and once in September 2000. No further sightings have been recorded since then. Green Cay is a small island and also supports black rats (''Rattus rattus''), which may threaten any surviving populations of the species.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q3493731 Spondylurus Reptiles described in 2012 Reptiles of the Caribbean Endemic fauna of the Caribbean Taxa named by Stephen Blair Hedges Taxa named by Caitlin E. Conn