[6] According to the report of Major W. G. Mair in 1873, in 1870, a Māori chief said that he had killed a kawekaweau he found under the bark of a dead rātā tree in the Waimana Valley in Te Urewera on the North Island of New Zealand.

Mair reported the chiefs description of the animal as being "two feet long and as thick as a man’s wrist; colour brown, striped longitudinally with dull red".

Initially, scientists examining the specimen suggested that it was from New Zealand and was in fact the lost kawekaweau, a giant and mysterious forest lizard of Māori oral tradition.

[6] In the DNA analysis, the relationships of New Caledonian geckos were poorly resolved, but Gigarcanum was usually found to be most closely related to the New Caledonia genera Eurydactylodes, Mniarogekko and/or Rhacodactylus.

[7] Based on comparison with its living relatives, it was probably a nocturnal arboreal animal that climbed trees.

[6] Gigarcanum delcourti was likely extinct or extremely rare by the time of the colonisation of New Caledonia in the mid 19th century, due to the absence of any other records of the species.