Kansas City, Mo. ? What’s black, white, red and green all over?

It’s something Avila University professor Robert Powell will announce sometime in December.

Powell, a biologist who has been at the Kansas City-based university for 30 years, and Robert Henderson, a curator at the Milwaukee Public Museum, have discovered a new species of lizard in the south Caribbean that Powell will get to name in the December issue of the Caribbean Journal of Science.

Powell, who recruits students from around the country each summer to take a research excursion with him to the Caribbean, found the new lizard in June after being tipped off about its existence.

The Rev. Bob de Silva, an amateur naturalist from St. Vincent who had visited Union Island, had been the only person to ever report seeing the geckolike lizard, and told Powell about it.

“It is indeed spectacular in its appearance,” Powell said from Guana Island in the British Virgin Islands, where he is studying other reptiles. “The lizard is greenish with bright red, black and white spots that seem to jump out at you when he is placed against a plain background. But in its natural habitat, it is hard to see.”

Powell said the lizard, which is about the size of half a cigarette, probably has been seen before and mistaken for a bug.

He said he was excited about his discovery, but his reaction was muted somewhat because he knew the lizard existed, and where to look for it.

He said he isn’t sure, but thinks the lizard fits the criteria for an endangered species. One of the still-nameless vertebrates has been preserved at the Kansas University Natural History Museum.