Hey, it's Laura Lichtenen, and you are listening to Science Friday.

On today's show, epic, ancient, seafaring, reptiles, and the people who go to the ends of the earth to study them.

If you had to pick one organism that could really, really do this, it would really be iguanas.

They're tough, tough as nails.

Yeah. that could really, really do this, it would really be iguanas. They're tough, tough as nails. If you picture iguanas, you might imagine them sunbathing on the hot sand in the Caribbean

or skittering around the Mojave Desert. But far, far away from where these iguanas are found is another

group of iguanas living on the islands of Fiji and Tonga in the South Pacific, pretty close to New

Zealand. And it begs the question, how did these iguanas end up all alone on the other side of the

ocean? In the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,

scientists suggest that millions of years ago, iguanas hitched a ride on a raft and accidentally

sailed all the way across the ocean before washing ashore and starting a new life. Here to discuss this intrepid adventure is Dr. Simon

Scarpetta, evolutionary biologist and assistant professor at the University of San Francisco

in California. Simon, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Flora. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be

here. Simon, how far would these iguanas have traveled? So in the modern day, as the crow flies distance between the western coast of North America

and Fiji, is somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 kilometers.

So 5,000-ish miles, something around that.

That feels long to me.

Yeah, it's really long.

It's quite long.

What should I be picturing?

In my mind, when I think about it, it's a big mat of vegetation or some down trees that get knocked over by a storm or potentially even a tsunami.

And there maybe are some iguanas in the

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