In 1938, Bernard C. Lewis of the Institute of Jamaica joined an Oxford University biological expedition to the Cayman Islands. Lewis was able to obtain two blue iguanas, a male and a female, which were later lodged with the British Museum of Natural History. Chapman Grant, in a monograph published in 1940, formally described the blue iguana for the first time as Cyclura macleayi lewisi. Schwartz and Carey established the trinomial (Cyclura nubila lewisi ) in 1977. They held that the blue iguana was a strongly distinct subspecies of the Cuban iguana (C. nubila), the species which it evolved from and can breed with. They emphasized its overall bright blue coloration, and noted that further study could reveal it to be a distinct species. Frederick Burton reclassified the blue iguana as a distinct species in 2004, after years of research comparing scale counts on the heads of Caribbean iguanas, including those found on Little Cayman, Cayman Brac, Cuba, and the Bahamas, as well as mitochondrial DNA analysis performed by Dr. Catherine Malone, to re-examine the phylogeography of the different species.
- Original Name: "Cyclura macleayi"
- Series: Reptiles
- Country: Cambodia (R.P. Kampuchea)
- Year: 1987-09-09
- Subject: Animals
- Perforation: comb 12¾
- Printing: offset lithography
- Face value: 0.80 riel
- Number of catalogue Michel: KH 885