Case file · Cryptid
The kawekaweau giant gecko
In 1870 a Māori chief told Major William Gilbert Mair that he had killed a kawekaweau, a giant forest lizard of tradition, under the bark of a rātā tree in the Waimana Valley, Te Urewera.
1870 CE · -38.25, 177.10 · status: disputed
The account
Mair published the account in 1873, describing a lizard 'two feet long, and as thick as a man's wrist'. In 1986 an unlabelled stuffed giant gecko was found in the Marseille Natural History Museum and described as Hoplodactylus delcourti, possibly the kawekaweau.
The sceptical view
A 2023 DNA study placed the Marseille specimen in a new genus, Gigarcanum, most likely from New Caledonia rather than New Zealand, so it no longer confirms the tradition.