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SerpentResearch.Com

Amphibians, Reptiles, & Natural History

John C Murphy

Author: JCM

  • Cat-eyed Snakes – Systematics & Biogeography

    Cat-eyed Snakes – Systematics & Biogeography

    The White-spotted Cat Snake, Boiga drapiezii, a Sundaland species that also occurs in southern Thailand.

  • Comments on the size of boas

    Comments on the size of boas

    Tom Crutchfield commented on the lengths of boas and notes that the Common Boa Constrictor ( Boa constrictor ) probably does not exceed 15 feet (4.57 m) in length. However, the Cuban Boa, Chilabothrus…

  • Geckos with armor

    Geckos with armor

    Osteoderms, bones that form in dermal tissue maybe a continuous or patchy layer of hard tissue in the dermis, a trait that is found in many lineages of tetrapods, including frogs, dinosaurs, leatherback turtles,…

  • Caecilians may be venomous

    Caecilians may be venomous

    Structure of the Upper Jaw and Lower Jaw of S. annulatus(A–D) (A) S. annulatus. (B) Upper jaw. (C) Lower jaw. (D) Head after partial skin corrosion showing the tooth-related glands digitally enhanced in green.(E)…

  • New monitor lizards from the western Pacific and a conservation problem

    New monitor lizards from the western Pacific and a conservation problem

    Above: a subadult Varanus bennetti, a newly described species from Losiep Island, Federated States of Micronesia ( photo by James Reardon). The monitor lizards of Palau, the Western Carolines and the Mariana Islands have…

  • The Variegated Banded Gecko – composed of six clades

    The Variegated Banded Gecko – composed of six clades

    Laurence Klauber writing about banded geckos in 1945 notes that Coleonyx is found only in North America and that they occur from the arid areas of the southwestern United States southward to the jungles…

  • Boa vertebrae from Caribbean Archeological sites

    Boa vertebrae from Caribbean Archeological sites

    Today snakes of the genus Boa have a patchy distribution in the islands that form the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea, but the constrictors are nearly absent from archaeological deposits in the region.…

  • The enigmatic snake genus Xenophidion, confirmation of two species

    The enigmatic snake genus Xenophidion, confirmation of two species

    In the early 1980’s, while working on the Trinidad and Tobago fauna I was in the field four or five times but by the late 1980’s I was focused on working on museum specimens…

  • Persiophis fahimii a new genus and species of colubrid snake from Iran

    Persiophis fahimii a new genus and species of colubrid snake from Iran

    Above. The holotype of Persiophis fahimii. Photo by Roman A. Nazarov. Rajabizadeh et al. (2020) present an updated phylogeny of colubrid snakes from the Western Palearctic by analyzing a supermatrix of all available global…