In Australia, three new species were discovered. These ancient reptile species found in Australia were isolated for millions of years in a remote rainforest area of Australia.

According to an October 28 joint news release from James Cook University and National Geographic, a collaborative expedition to Cape York Peninsula in northeast Australia, a remote mountain region, resulted in discovering three new vertebrate species, Science Recorder reports.  

These new species in Australia are the leaf-tailed gecko, a gold-colored skink, and a boulder-dwelling frog.

"We're talking about animals that are ancient - they would have been around in the rainforest of Gondwana... rainforest that's been there for all time," said Dr Hoskin from James Cook University, The Telegraph reports.

Accessible only by helicopter, the upland plateau area is a 1.8 by 1.8 mile patch which sits on a "monstrous wall" of "millions of giant, piled up boulders the size of houses and cars," according to The Telegraph. The whole mountain range is around nine miles long and three miles wide.

"Finding three new, obviously distinct vertebrates would be surprising enough in somewhere poorly explored like New Guinea, let alone in Australia, a country we think we've explored pretty well," Hoskin added in a statement from the university, CNN reports.

The newly-discovered Blotched Boulder Frog was found only in the boulder field at Cape Melville, according to CNN.

"These species are restricted to the upland rainforest and boulder fields of Cape Melville. They've been isolated there for millennia, evolving into distinct species in their unique rocky environment," Hoskin continued.

"The top of Cape Melville is a lost world. Finding these new species up there is the discovery of a lifetime," Hoskin said. "I'm still amazed and buzzing from it."

But Hoskin said the highlight of the expedition was the Cape Melville Leaf-Tailed Gecko, a "primitive-looking" lizard. The species is considered a relic from an Australia of the past, when the rainforest was more widespread on the continent, CNN reports. The lizard can grow up to 20 centimeters (almost 8 inches) long.

The other species, the Cape Melville Shade Skink is unlike the other gecko found, because it hunts during the day too. It has a golden hue and is isolated to the plateau rainforest, CNN reports.