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This image depicts mouse embryos with the ZRS from cobra or  python inserted into their genomes, replacing the normal gene regulator.  Their truncated limb development is visible in the comparative  bone scans. Credit: Kvon et al. Cell 2016 Snakes lost their limbs over 100 million years ago, but scientists have struggled to identify the genetic…

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Male of Erhard’s Wall Lizard (Podarcis erhardii) in the ruins of Ag. Achilleos  on the small island in Lake Mikri Prespa. Author: Jeroen Speybroeck mirrors.nl:Afbeelding:Erhard wall lizard Florina.jpg The Aegean Wall Lizard, Podarcis erhardii inhabits the Balkan peninsula and the Aegean islands. On the mainland it ranges from Albania, the Republic of Macedonia and southern Bulgaria to the…

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An interpretive drawing of SMF ME 11332a overlaid on a„ photograph. The lizard,  Geiseltaliellus maarius (orange), is preserved in the stomach of the snake (white).  The lizard was swallowed headfirst, and the tail does not appear to have been shed  during the encounter with the snake. The position of the insect in the abdominal cavity…

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Nicéforo María’s Shadow Snake, Synophis niceforomariae The genus Synophis contains a number of enigmatic species, distributed primarily in the Andean highlands of northern South America. Their extreme crypsis and rarity has precluded detailed study of most species. A recent flurry of collection activity resulted in the accession of many new specimens, and the description of…

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The new subfamily Ahaetuliinae contains Ahaetulla (left) and  Dryophiops (right). JCM In a recently published paper in PLoS One Figueroa et al. (2016) provide a species level phylogeny for 1652 snake species and describe a new colubrid subfamily and genus based upon 9,523 base pairs from 10 loci (5 nuclear, 5 mitochondrial), including previously unsequenced genera…

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The rear fang of the African Twig snake, Thelotornis capensis. Snake venoms have been subjected to increasingly sensitive analyses for well over 100 years, but most research has been restricted to front-fanged snakes, which actually represent a relatively small proportion of extant species of advanced snakes. Because rear-fanged snakes are a diverse and distinct radiation of…

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In a forthcoming paper in MPE Alencar et al (2016) look at the diversification of vipers. The cosmopolitan family contains about 329 venomous species showing a striking heterogeneity in species richness among lineages. While the subfamily Azemiopinae comprises only two species, 70% of all viper species are arranged in the subfamily Crotalinae or the “pit…

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Jagor’s Water Snake, Enhydris jagorii. Photo D. R. Karns Jagor’s water snake (Enhydris jagorii) is a freshwater snake endemic to the Chao Phraya-Ta Chin basin of Thailand. Habitat change and destruction are the main threats to this snake, where a large area of the wetland has been rapidly transformed into urban and agricultural areas. Moreover,…

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The type vertebra of Laophis crotaloides modified from the original publication by Owen (1857). Image not to scale. In 1857, British palaeontologist Richard Owen described Laophis crotaloides, a new species of viperid snake, on the basis of 13 large, fossilized vertebrae from Megalo Emvolon, near Thessaloniki, in northern Greece. According to Owen, the vertebrae belonged to…

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Wallaceophis gujarateneis sp. n  A photograph of an uncollected snakes in 2007 paper depicted a small yellow snake with two dark stripes, the species discussed in the article lacked stripes, and a follow up investigation revealed a new species in a new genus with a very ancient history. Mirza et al. 2016 obtained a second…

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If snakes were introduced to Ireland, surely they would hav to  look like this. The legend of St. Patrick banishing snakes from the emerald isle some 1,500 years ago is indelibly etched in folklore — even if science suggests snakes were unlikely to have colonized the country following the last ice age. But what would happen…

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Amphisbaenians are a clade of fossorial squamates that are usually legless and have skull modified of burrowing. They appear to be the sister to the the Eastern Hemisphere lizards in the family Lacertidae. Five major clades  are recognized, but controversy exists as to which North American clade is the most basally diverging: the limbed Bipedidae…

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Chameleo chameleo from Samos, Greece.. Benny Trapp Chameleons  constitute a diverse clade of lizards with more than 200 species that are distributed in Africa, Madagascar and several Indian Ocean islands, southern Asia, Cyprus and southern parts of Mediterranean Europe. Cryptic diversity is common within the group. Several new species having been described in the current…

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Liolaemus uniformis. Photo credit:  Jaime Troncoso-Palacios During a field trip at 3000 metres above sea level, a group of scientists, led by Jaime Troncoso-Palacios, Universidad de Chile, discovered a new endemic lizard species, in the mountains of central Chile, scientists. Noticeably different in size and scalation, compared to the rest of the local lizards, what initially…

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Left. Anna Pintor with a flap-footed lizards (Pygopodiae). Photo credit: Image courtesy of James Cook University.Right pygopodids are legless geckos. JCM James Cook University scientists have found lizards exposed to rain, hail and shine may cope better with extreme weather events predicted as a result of climate change than their fair-weather cousins. A new study by JCU PhD…

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A juvenile Burmese Python constricting a rat. The evolution of constriction  was undoubtedly very important milestone in the evolution and radiation of snakes. Killing large prey quickly and reducing the chance of injury to a snake allowed snakes to subdue otherwise unobtainable, larger prey. Constricting snakes exert pressure by coiling around and squeezing their prey,…

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In two recently published articles Rovatsos et al. (2015 a, b) highly differentiated heteromorphic ZZ/ZW sex chromosomes with a heterochromatic W are  basic among the advanced snakes, Colubroidea, while other snake lineages generally lack them. The authors examined the dragonsnake, Xenodermus javanicus (family Xenodermatidae), which is phylogenetically nested between snake lineages with and without differentiated…

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The rare short nosed sea snake discovered  on Ningaloo reef, Western Australia. Photo  Credit: Grant Griffin, W.A. Dept. Parks and  Wildlife Scientists from James Cook University have discovered two critically endangered species of sea snakes, previously thought to be extinct, off the coast of Western Australia. It’s the first time the snakes have been spotted alive and…

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The Indo-Australian Archipelago is a marine biodiversity hotspot centred in Southeast Asia that contains many of the extant viviparous sea snakes. Points of origin of for snake radiations are of interest  in understanding the distribution of current diversity. In an early on-line view of a new paper in the Journal of Biogeography, Ukuwela and colleagues…

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Modern snake skull, with inner ear shown in orange.  Photo Credit: Hongyu Yi Modern snakes probably originated as habitat specialists, but it is controversial unclear whether they were ancestrally terrestrial burrowers or marine swimmers. In a new paper Yi and Norell (2015)  use x-ray virtual models of the inner ear to predict the habit of…

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A dinosaur nest. Photo credit: Kohei Tanaka Extinct archosaurs’ eggshell porosity may be used as a proxy for predicting covered or exposed nest types, according to a study published November 25, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Kohei Tanaka from the University of Calgary and colleagues. Knowledge about dinosaur nests may provide insight…

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This is an Anderson’s Pitviper (Trimeresurus andersoni), a venomous  snake in the Andaman Islands of India. Photo Credit: Dr. Kartik Sunagar In a new study published in  PLOS Genetics, scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have revealed new discoveries about the evolution of venom. The research points to a ‘two-speed’ evolution of animal venom, showing…

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Gallotia galloti. Photographer’s Credit: Petermann 2005, via Wikimedia Commons The Island Rule on body size claims big animals  evolve smaller body sizes due to the limited resource of food and limited habitat; while smaller animals that have no natural enemies in islands evolve larger body sizes.  Andrej Čerňanský and colleagues discovered a fossil related to the genus…

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By Zuhair Amr via Wikimedia Commons Gasperetti’s sand viper, Cerastes gasperetti, is the most common snake in Saudi Arabia. However, this snake remains poorly studied. It is distributed throughout many deserts in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Horned viper is a nocturnal, true desert snake and prefers sandy soil with some vegetation. Horned vipers are…

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Cubophis cantherigerus cantherigerus. Photo by Lisa Ferguso Dipsadidae is one of the largest snake families with more than 754 species, mostly distributed in the Neotropics. The subfamily Xenodontinae is exclusive to South American to Mexico and the West Indies. Mexico, and the West Indies, and highly diverse in both morphology and natural history. The Tribe Alsophiini…

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Nine species comprise the arboreal boid genus Corallus. Combined, they range from Guatemala in northern Central America to southeastern Brazil in South America, and two species occur on islands in the West Indies. Based on extensive fieldwork by the author extending over 25 years, observations from colleagues, and the literature, Natural History of Neotropical Treeboas…

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The giant Sarcosuchus, an extinct crocodilian. Illustrators Credit: Imperial  College London and Robert Nicholls (Paleocreations) Crocodylians include present-day species of crocodiles, alligators, caimans and gavials and their extinct ancestors. Crocodylians first appeared in the Late Cretaceous period, approximately 85 million years ago, and the 250 million year fossil record of their extinct relatives reveals a diverse evolutionary history. Extinct…

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Snakes and snakebites in Costa Rica. (A) The terciopelo  B. asper. (B) Average annual snakebite incidence, by  canton, from 2005 to 2013. County color indicates snakebite incidence rate, county boundary color indicates relative risk,  and a marking described in the map legend indicates the  primary cluster. From Chaves et al. 2015 Snake envenomation is frequently considered a neglected medical problem…

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At least three large species of monitor lizards lived in prehistoric Australia, an undescribed fossil species known from one location, the Komodo dragon (Varanus  komodoensis), and the Megalania (Varanus priscus). Komodo dragons are an extant relic species confined to a few islands in the Lesser Sundas, Indonesia.  Megalania is extinct, attained a length of about 7 m…

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Two neonate Enhydris enhydris emerging from the birth canal at the same time. Most homalapsid snakes are tropical yet viviparous. The usual answer to the question of which came first the egg or the neonate in lizards and snakes is usually answered as the egg. Squamates reproduce either by laying eggs (oviparity) or by giving…

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Members of the Phrynosma douglassi complex. Photo  credit: R. Montanucci. Horned Lizards of the genus Phrynosoma are perhaps the most novel North American lizards. One species group, the Short-horned lizards (the Phrynosoma douglasii species complex) occur throughout the inter-montane West and Great Plains of western North America. In a new paper, Montanucci(2015) has reviewed the…

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Iguana iguana is invasive in Florida South Florida is on the front lines in the war against invasive reptiles and amphibians because its warm climate makes it a place where they like to live, a new University of Florida study shows. Using computer models and data showing where reptiles live in Florida, UF/IFAS scientists predicted…

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Eunotosaurus africanus (Seeley 1892) Middle Permian ~15 cm  snout to vent length, was considered by Watson (1914) as the  ancestor to the turtle because of its wide ribs and low number  of dorsal vertebrae. The present study nests turtles with  Stephanospondylus and the wide ribs find their origins in the  less wide ribs of Milleretta…

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The skeleton of Desmatochelys padillai measures almost 2 meters. Photo Credit:PaleoBios/Cadena Scientists at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt have described the world’s oldest fossil sea turtle known to date. The fossilized reptile is at least 120 million years old — which makes it about 25 million years older than the previously known oldest specimen.…

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All members of the sand boa genus Eryx give birth to live young, except the  Arabian Sand Boa, Eryx jayakari. This suggests that E. jayakari (left)  re-evolved egg-laying from a viviparous ancestor. Right the viviparous Kenyan  sand boa Eryx colubrinus.  Photo credits: Rick Staub and Arkive, and  Roy Stockwell. I very much dislike chicken and egg questions because it…

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Two Tegus, Salvator merianae and S. rufescens JCM When two closely related species live side by side it is generally assumed that they have some way of dividing the resources so that they are not in direct competition with each other. The large terrestrial lizards the Black and White Tegu, Tupinambis (=Salavator) merianae, and the…

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Photo credit: DMM Mendes The majority of coral snakes are terrestrial/fossorial species, but the Suriname Coral Snake (Micrurus surinamensis) and the Ribbon Coral Snake (Micrurus lemniscatus) use shallow water, swampy habitats for foraging for food. Like other coral snakes they tend to feed on small, elongated prey. Their diet includes invertebrates, lizards, amphibians, fish, and…

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Balkan Green Lizard. Lacerta trilineata.Photo Credit:  Kostas Sagonas Life on an island isn’t always easy. To make the most of the little there is to eat on many Greek islands, the digestive system of s has evolved considerably compared to family members on the mainland. Surprisingly, many of these insect-eating lizards even have special valves…

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Thamnophis gigas. Photo by Dave Feliz The Giant Gartersnake (Thamnophis gigas) is a highly aquatic species that uses marshes and sloughs, low-gradient streams, ponds, and small lakes, with cattails, bulrushes, willows, or other emergent or water-edge vegetation. Because of the direct loss of natural habitat, this snake now relies heavily on rice fields in the…

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Salamanders like this Costa Rican Bolitoglossa striata are  more susceptible to environmental disturbances than other amphibians. JCM A recently published article by Johnson et al. (2015) takes a second look at the herpetofauna of Central America and its conservation needs. The authors found Mesoamerica (the area composed of Mexico and Central America) is the third…

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Gueragama sulamerica. Credit: Julius Csotonyi University of Alberta paleontologists have discovered a new species of lizard, named Gueragama sulamericana, in the municipality of Cruzeiro do Oeste in Southern Brazil in the rock outcrops of a Late Cretaceous desert, dated approximately 80 million years ago. “The roughly 1700 species of iguanas are almost without exception restricted…

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Currently, three percent of land in the US is inhospitable to  lizards (orange areas). In the next century, the scientists say  the areas where lizards may not thrive could grow to 48  percent (purple area). Map Credit: Ofir Levy; Lizard Photo  – The Tree Lizard, Urosaurus ornatus. JCM The expected impact of climate change on North American lizards is much worse…

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Atlas Serpientes de Venezuela by Marco Natera Mumaw, Luis Felipe Esqueda, González and Manuel. The book’s size is 32×25, full color, dust jacket, it contains 456 pages,>400 photos, >60 maps on geographic distribution and assembled in four chapters and four thematic appendices. For requests send an email to Luis Felipe Esqueda, Co-author and Editor or directly to…

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Corythomantis greeningi greening was found to have spines extending from  its skull that can poke through the skin to deliver poison into potential predators (left). Corythomantis greeningi greening, or Greening’s frog (middle). Aparasphenodon brunoi, or Bruno’s Casque-headed Frog (right.). Photo Credit: Carlos Jared. Venomous animals have toxins associated with delivery mechanisms that can introduce the toxins into another animal.…

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The most commonly encountered snake in oil palm plantations was Ninia atrata. Rainforest in the tropics is frequent cut to make way for the African oil palms, Elaeis guineensis. The plant is most often grown for cooking oil but has recently attracted the attention of the alternative energy industry as a source of biofuel. While…

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The following has been adapted from a press release and a blog post, with some light editing by me (JCM). A new fossil, named Tetrapodophis amplectus, claims to be a four-legged, burrowing snake. (A) Counterpart, showing skull and skeleton impression. (B) Main slab, showing skeleton and skull impression. Figure 1 from Martill et al. 2015.  (C) The…

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