French scientist, Ivan Ineich, displays a never-before-seen species of gecko at France’s Natural History Museum in Paris. [Francois Mori (AP Photo)]

French scientists say they hatched a new gecko species from an egg plucked from its nest in a South Pacific island and carried it 12,000 miles to Paris in a box lined with Kleenex.

France’s National Museum of Natural History said it was the first time a new lizard species has been catalogued based on an individual raised from an egg. Given the Latin name Lepidodactylus buleli, the gecko makes its home near the tops of the trees that line the west coast of Espiritu Santo, one of the larger islands of the Vanuatu archipelago east of Australia, the museum said.