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Visakhapatnam Legless Skink
Barkudia melanosticta
Barkudia melanosticta commonly known as Visakhapatnam limbless skink or Russell's legless skink is a skink endemic to Vishakapatnam region of Circar Coast, in Andhra Pradesh state of southeastern India. One of the foremost of Indian reptiles collected during the days of Patrick Russell in 1790s, this species' type specimen was considered lost. Later its taxonomy was fixed by redescribing recent collections dating between 1950s-80s by professors of Andhra University, Waltair from their campus, and deposited in the Zoological Survey of India in Kolkata, India (fide I. Das).
From the article Barkudia melanosticta on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
A burrowing species, B. melanosticta has an elongated body, with no legs. The eyes are vestigial, with only lower eyelids. The ear openings are slit-like. It may attain a snout-to-vent length of 16.5 cm (6.5 in), plus a tail 6.8 cm (2.7 in) long.
Range & habitat
B. melanosticta is known only from the vicinity of its type locality - Visakhapatnam in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.
Wikipedia: “Geographic range”
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
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In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Barkudia melanosticta in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 37360.