Current Herpetology

Turtle fossils discovered from the putative Upper Pleistocene fissure-filling deposit on Tokunoshima Island of the Amami Group is described as a new species, Geoemyda amamiensis (Chelonii: Geoemydidae). These fossils include a carapace exclusive of peripherals and a few other elements, fragments of a neural, a costal, eight peripherals, an anterior half of the plastron, two epiplastra, and an incomplete right humerus. Geoemyda amamiensis most resembles G. japonica, an extant species endemic to three islands of the Okinawa Group, but is distinguished from the latter by the presence in dorsal view of a short anterior projection in the entoplastron. These two species seem to have split from each other through vicariance within the central Ryukyus.

A comparative study was carried out on the vertebral morphology of 54 species and subspecies of snakes from Japan and a few other East and Southeast Asian countries. My purpose was to establish a character table for identification of Cenozoic fossil snake vertebrae frequently found in these regions. A total of 29 taxonomically useful characters were recognized. The validity of the vertebral features previously proposed to diagnose various snake taxa is examined on the basis of the present results.

A new species of the aquatic natricine colubrid snake genus Opisthotropis is described based on a single specimen from Nong Khai Province, northeastern Thailand. The new species is distinguished from other Opisthotropis by the combination of having smooth scales on the body and tail, 15 dorsal scale rows throughout the body, the fourth supralabial in contact with the eye, the posterior pair of chin shields longer than the anterior pair, and a glossy black dorsum with yellow spots.

Pareas iwasakii, a rare pareatine snake endemic to Japan, is considered a dietary specialist on land snails. I observed the oviposition and hatchling diet of this species in captivity. One female laid six eggs on 30 September, and one of these eggs hatched on 26 November 2004. The hatchling fed on the soft body of juvenile land snails, leaving empty shells, most likely by extracting the former from the latter using its mandibles as do the adult snakes. This observation suggests that the dietary habits of P. iwasakii do not exhibit ontogenetic changes.

The poorly-known agamid lizard, Mictopholis austeniana, hitherto known from the unique holotype collected nearly a century ago from “Hills near Harmatti” (in Arunachal Pradesh, Northeast India), is reported from two sites in Arunachal Pradesh. The colouration of a live specimen is described and the species illustrated in colour for the first time.

A captive female mountain wolf snake (Lycodon ruhstrati ruhstrati) from Taiwan laid ten eggs (length=35.22 mm, width=10.08 mm, and mass=2.5 g on average) on 26 August 2002. Eight of these eggs hatched after 49 days, and six hatchlings survived. During the first month, these surviving neonates (snoutvent length [SVL]= 156.8 mm, tail length [TL]=56.9 mm, and body mass [BM]=2.2 g on average at hatching), left unfed, grew in average by 10.4% in SVL and 8.5% in TL, but lost 13.8% of BM. Another Taiwanese female, collected on 18 February 2006 as a road-kill, had eight eggs in the oviducts.