New limbless lizard discovered

[Sputnik]

New limbless lizard species discovered - Yahoo! News

It always amazes me when instead of hearing of yet another species becoming sadly extinct, a new one is found. I love the fact that we don't yet know everything and there are still a few surprises to be had.

[adamanteus]

Good find Esther. It looks very like Ophisaurus apodus, doesn't it?

[Elliot]

Cool lizard.

[drache]

very pretty
I don't know that much about legless lizards
what are sand fish?
and are blind snakes legless lizards or something entirely different?

[Stefan-A]

The sandfish is a (or rather "The") skink, Scincus scincus. Not legless.

[drache]

the sandfish is not legless, lol
I guess I made assumptions based on the fact that I've only seen pics of them with their heads sticking out of the sand and no legs showing
just goes to show - pics can be deceiving
I've meant to check them out more closely . . .
skinks, huh?
I'm starting to get into reading about them, since Mikhaila wants one with a blue tongue - Tiliqua
Cool critters
thanks - now I need a good skink book

[Thamnophis]

The page is no longer avaliable.

So i do not know what lizard it was.

Ophisaurus apodus we keep in our Reptile Zoo.
Nice animals. Rather easy to keep.
Tiliqua we keep also.

[Thamnophis]

I think I found it...



May 28, 2007—It may look like a snake and live like a snake. But a tiny reptile found recently in India is something else entirely, an Indian zoologist announced today.

The 7-inch (18-centimeter) creature is not a serpent at all, but actually a completely new species of limbless lizard, said Sushil Kumar Dutta of North Orissa University.
"The lizard is new to science and is an important discovery. It is not found anywhere else in the world," Dutta told the Associated Press.
"It prefers to live in a cool retreat, soft soil, and below stones," he added.
Though limbless lizards are rare, a number of such species have been found throughout the world, including elsewhere in India. Creatures known as glass snakes or glass reptiles, for example, superficially resemble serpents and are known to live in Asia, Africa, and the Americas.
These animals lost the use of their limbs some time after snakes and lizards split onto separate evolutionary paths. The creatures are distinct because they retain lizard characteristics that are completely missing from serpents—such as eyelids and external ears.
Dutta and a team of researchers found the latest legless reptile near the Raurkela region of India's east coast state of Orissa, about 625 miles (1,000 kilometers) southeast of New Delhi (India map).
The find appears to belong to the genus Sepsophis, Dutta said. Its closest relatives live in Sri Lanka and South Africa, he added. Skeptics, however, are waiting for a full scientific description to confirm that the discovery is actually a lizard—and not, as first appearances would suggest, a plain old snake.