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 centimetres (3.9 in) long.
| Shorthead lance skink | |
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Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Order: | Squamata |
| Family: | Scincidae |
| Genus: | Acontias |
| Species: | A. breviceps
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| Binomial name | |
| Acontias breviceps Essex, 1925
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| Synonyms[2] | |
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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 6,000 feet (1,800 m). 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.[3]
References
edit- ^ Conradie, W.; Bauer, A.M. (2018). "Acontias breviceps". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2018: e.T128870065A115660145. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2018-2.RLTS.T128870065A115660145.en. Retrieved 18 November 2021.
- ^ Acontias breviceps at the Reptarium.cz Reptile Database. Accessed 5 September 2020.
- ^ Moffett, Rodney. A Biographical Dictionary of Contributors to the Natural History of the Free State and Lesotho.
Bibliography
edit- Daniels, Savel R.; Heideman, Neil J. L.; Hendricks, Martin G. J.; Crandall, Keith A. (2006). "Taxonomic subdivisions within the fossorial skink subfamily Acontinae (Squamata: Scincidae) reconsidered: a multilocus perspective". Zoologica Scripta. 35 (4): 353. ISSN 0300-3256.
- 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
- 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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