Celeste is home! Elizabeth Morrison (left) Curator of Zoological Collections at the Natural History Museum of Jamaica and Nicole Patrick-Shaw, Deputy Executive Director, the Institute of Jamaica, holding the treasured Jamaican Giant Galliwasp, who returned to Jamaica with them on April 24, 2024. (Photo: Natural History Museum of Jamaica)

…The joint team, which travelled to Scotland on a  six-day visit last weekend to retrieve the approximately 16-inch-long specimen from their counterparts at the University of Glasgow had an official handover on Monday at the university’s Hunterian Museum where the Giant Galliwasp, or ‘Celeste’, as it is being affectionately called by the repatriation team, had been housed…

The Jamaican Giant Galliwasp became extinct in the mid-1800s due to the clearing of lands for sugarcane production and the introduction of the invasive predator mongoose.  Their habitats were mostly wetlands, said to be in St. Elizabeth and Clarendon.

The repatriation team included Morrison and Dionne Newell, Senior Research officer in Entomology, also of NHMJ/IOJ; UWI Museum curator, Dr. Shani Roper; Dr. Tannice Hall of the Department of Life Sciences, and graduate student Desireina DesLandes…

Source: Celeste, the Jamaican Giant Galliwasp, has arrived home: a historic repatriation – Petchary’s Blog