Letheobia Pallida
The Zanzibar beaked snake (''Letheobia pallida'') is a species of blind snake in the Typhlopidae family.McDiarmid RW, Campbell JA, Touré T. 1999. Snake Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference, vol. 1. Herpetologists' League. 511 pp. (series). (volume). It is endemic to Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ....The Reptile Database. www.reptile-database.org. Notes References * Cope, E.D. 1869. Observations on REPTILES of the Old World. Art. II. ''Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia'', Volume "1868" 0316-323. *Abstract Letheobia Reptiles described in 1869 {{Scolecophidia-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Edward Drinker Cope
Edward Drinker Cope (July 28, 1840 – April 12, 1897) was an American zoologist, paleontologist, comparative anatomist, herpetologist, and ichthyologist. Born to a wealthy Quaker family, Cope distinguished himself as a child prodigy interested in science; he published his first scientific paper at the age of 19. Though his father tried to raise Cope as a gentleman farmer, he eventually acquiesced to his son's scientific aspirations. Cope married his cousin and had one child; the family moved from Philadelphia to Haddonfield, New Jersey, although Cope would maintain a residence and museum in Philadelphia in his later years. Cope had little formal scientific training, and he eschewed a teaching position for field work. He made regular trips to the American West, prospecting in the 1870s and 1880s, often as a member of United States Geological Survey teams. A personal feud between Cope and paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh led to a period of intense fossil-finding competit ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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George Albert Boulenger
George Albert Boulenger (19 October 1858 – 23 November 1937) was a Belgian-British zoologist who described and gave scientific names to over 2,000 new animal species, chiefly fish, reptiles, and amphibians. Boulenger was also an active botanist during the last 30 years of his life, especially in the study of roses. Life Boulenger was born in Brussels, Belgium, the only son of Gustave Boulenger, a Belgian public notary, and Juliette Piérart, from Valenciennes. He graduated in 1876 from the Free University of Brussels with a degree in natural sciences, and worked for a while at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, as an assistant naturalist studying amphibians, reptiles, and fishes. He also made frequent visits during this time to the '' Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle'' in Paris and the British Museum in London. In 1880, he was invited to work at the Natural History Museum, then a department of the British Museum, by Dr. Albert C. L. G. Gün ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Van Wallach
Van Stanley Bartholomew Wallach (born 1947) is an American herpetologist and an expert on blindsnakes and on the systematics, internal anatomy, and taxonomy of snakes. He has contributed to the descriptions of at least 46 species of snakes and has conducted fieldwork on tropical snakes in the Philippines, Nicaragua, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. For many years Wallach worked as a Curatorial Assistant at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He retired from the museum in 2012, but he continues to work on snake taxonomy. Wallach was the lead editor of the 1,227 page authoritative reference book ''Snakes of the World''. In the 2000s Wallach was one of several herpetologists who became embroiled in a dispute with Raymond Hoser, a self-published Australian herpetologist, over proper nomenclatorial acts. Hoser charged Wallach with attempting to name species that Hoser had already described in his self-published journal. Wallach ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can reproduction, produce Fertility, fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology (biology), morphology, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined. The most recent rigorous estimate for the total number of species of eukaryotes is between 8 and 8.7 million. However, only about 14% of these had been described by 2011. All species (except viruses) are given a binomial nomenclature, two-part name, a "binomial". The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specifi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Blind Snake
The Scolecophidia, commonly known as blind snakes or thread snakes, are an infraorder of snakes. They range in length from . All are fossorial (adapted for burrowing). Five families and 39 genera are recognized. The Scolecophidia infraorder is most likely paraphyletic. Taxonomy The infraorder name Scolecophidia derives from the two Ancient Greek words or σκώληκος (, genitive ), meaning "earthworm", and (), meaning "snake". It refers to their shape and fossorial lifestyle. Families Evolution Despite only having fossils as early as the Cretaceous, Scolecophidia itself likely originated in the Middle Jurassic, with Anomalepididae, Leptotyphlopidae, and Typhlopoidea diverging from one another during the Late Jurassic. Within Typhlopoidea, Gerrhopilidae likely diverged from the Xenotyphlopidae-Typhlopidae clade during the Early Cretaceous, and Xenotyphlopidae and Typhlopidae likely diverged from one another during the Late Cretaceous. Scolecophidians are believed t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Typhlopidae
The Typhlopidae are a family of blind snakes. They are found mostly in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and all mainland Australia and various islands. The rostral scale overhangs the mouth to form a shovel-like burrowing structure. They live underground in burrows, and since they have no use for vision, their eyes are mostly vestigial. They have light-detecting black eye spots, and teeth occur in the upper jaw. Typhlopids do not have dislocatable lower jaw articulations restricting them to prey smaller than their oral aperture. The tail ends with a horn-like scale. Most of these species are oviparous. Currently, 18 genera are recognized containing over 200 species. Geographic range They are found in most tropical and many subtropical regions all over the world, particularly in Africa, Asia, islands in the Pacific, tropical America, and southeastern Europe. Fossil record Possible Typhlopid skin has been identified in Dominican amber. Genera Type genus For ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Endemism
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, the Cape sugarbird is found exclusively in southwestern South Africa and is therefore said to be ''endemic'' to that particular part of the world. An endemic species can be also be referred to as an ''endemism'' or in scientific literature as an ''endemite''. For example ''Cytisus aeolicus'' is an endemite of the Italian flora. ''Adzharia renschi'' was once believed to be an endemite of the Caucasus, but it was later discovered to be a non-indigenous species from South America belonging to a different genus. The extreme opposite of an endemic species is one with a cosmopolitan distribution, having a global or widespread range. A rare alternative term for a species that is endemic is "precinctive", which applies t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area and 20% of its land area.Sayre, April Pulley (1999), ''Africa'', Twenty-First Century Books. . With billion people as of , it accounts for about of the world's human population. Africa's population is the youngest amongst all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Despite a wide range of natural resources, Africa is the least wealthy continent per capita and second-least wealthy by total wealth, behind Oceania. Scholars have attributed this to different factors including geography, climate, tribalism, Scramble for Africa, colonialism, the Cold War, neocolonialism, lack of democracy, and corruption. Despite this low concentration of wealth, recent economic expansion and the large and young ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Letheobia
''Letheobia'' is a genus of blind snakes in the family Typhlopidae. Wallach, Van (2005) "''Letheobia pauwelsi'', a new species of blindsnake from Gabon (Serpentes: Typhlopidae)." ''African Journal of Herpetology'' 54 (1): 85-91. Geographic range The genus is endemic to Africa. Taxonomy In 1869, the genus ''Letheobia'' was established by Edward Drinker Cope based primarily on two specimens of ''Letheobia pallida'' from Zanzibar, but later also including ''Letheobia caeca'' (originally ''Onychocephalus cæcus'' Duméril, 1856) from Gabon. Wilhelm Peters, in 1874 when describing ''Onychocephalus lumbriciformis'' from Zanzibar and in 1878 ''Typhlops unitaeniatus'' from Kenya, considered ''Letheobia'' to be a subgenus. Nonetheless, in 1881, Peters selected ''Letheobia caeca'' Duméril as the type species for the genus. In 1883, Boulenger decided that at best ''Letheobia'' was a subgenus of ''Typhlops'', and placed it as a junior synonym. Later in reconstructing ''Rhinotyphlops'' i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |