Underwood's mussurana

Underwood's mussurana
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Squamata
Suborder: Serpentes
Family: Colubridae
Genus: Clelia
Species: C. errabunda
Binomial name
Clelia errabunda
Underwood, 1993

Underwood's mussurana (Clelia errabunda) is an extinct species of snake formerly endemic to the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. It was originally thought to belong to the species Clelia clelia. Like other species of mussurana, it is known to have fed on other snakes; one museum specimen is preserved in the act of swallowing a Bothrops species. Its extinction is believed to have been caused by human activity.

It was mistakenly recorded as present on Dominica due to a cataloging error.

References

  • Malhotra, Anita; Thorpe, Roger S. (1999), Reptiles & Amphibians of the Eastern Caribbean, Macmillan Education Ltd., pp. 50, 96, ISBN 0-333-69141-5 
  • Powell, Robert; Henderson, Robert W. (2005), "Conservation Status of Lesser Antillean Reptiles", Iguana, 12 (2): 63–77. 

Further reading


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 1/25/2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.