Acontias breviceps

Acontias breviceps, the shorthead lance skink or shortheaded legless skink, is a species of viviparous, legless, fossorial lizards occurring along the southern and eastern sections of the Great Escarpment in South Africa. It may grow up to 10 cm long.

Shorthead lance skink

Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Squamata
Family: Scincidae
Genus: Acontias
Species:
A. breviceps
Binomial name
Acontias breviceps
Essex, 1925
Synonyms
  • Acontias plumbeus breviceps Fitzsimons, 1943

This skink was first collected in 1925 by Robert Essex at Hogsback in the Amatola Mountains in the Eastern Cape at an elevation of some 6000 ft. A disjunct second population exist in the Transvaal Drakensberg. Essex collected for the Albany Museum of Grahamstown, but a fire in 1941 destroyed most specimens and records.[2]

References
  1. Conradie, W. & Bauer, A.M. 2018. Acontias breviceps . The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2018: e.T128870065A115660145. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2018-2.RLTS.T128870065A115660145.en. Downloaded on 09 January 2020.
  2. "A Biographical Dictionary of Contributors to the Natural History of the Free State and Lesotho" - Rodney Moffett

Bibliography
  • Daniels, Savel R.; Neil J. L. Heideman, Martin G. J. Hendricks, Keith A. Crandall 2006. Taxonomic subdivisions within the fossorial skink subfamily Acontinae (Squamata: Scincidae) reconsidered: a multilocus perspective. Zoologica Scripta 35 (4): 353
  • Essex, R. 1925. Descriptions of two new species of the genus Acontias and notes on some other lizards found in the Cape Province. Rec. Albany Mus. 3: 332–342.
  • Greer, Allen E. 2001. Distribution of maximum snout-vent length among species of Scincid lizards. Journal of Herpetology 35 (3): 383-395 - get paper here
  • Lamb, T.; Biswas, S. & Bauer, A.M. 2010. A phylogenetic reassessment of African fossorial skinks in the subfamily Acontinae (Squamata: Scincidae): evidence for parallelism and polyphyly. Zootaxa 2657: 33–46
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