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Bornean spine-jawed snake (Xenophidion acanthognathus)

PostPosted: Sun Apr 16, 2017 7:26 pm
by Neil Rowntree
Evening all,

Almost five months ago we found a pretty interesting snake in Lambir Hills, Borneo. Here’s an excerpt from the trip report:

'For me, one of the greatest things about the species diversity in rainforests is that you never know what you’re going to find. On top of this, sometimes when you find something you still don’t know what you’ve found…

After a short ascent we crested a ridge as the most exciting noise in the jungle rang out: the cry of ‘Snake!’ – And there, lying on a mossy log, was a 25cm chequered snake with an unfamiliar look to it. Luckily it was not going anywhere fast and we were able to take photographs whilst swiftly leafing through our field guide to see what we were dealing with. Could it be a reed snake? Wolfy? We just couldn’t tell. We were pretty sure we hadn’t seen anything like this before…

…The reason for this was that this snake had only ever been recorded once (just one single record from Sabah in 1987), making this the second ever known sighting of this species! The shots below are, as I understand, the only photographs of a living specimen of the Bornean spine-jawed snake (Xenophidion acanthognathus).'


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Bornean spine-jawed snake (Xenophidion acanthognathus)

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Bornean spine-jawed snake (Xenophidion acanthognathus).


This concludes the report I posted earlier (http://northumberlandexplorer.weebly.co ... -2016.html)

Hope you like the 'small strange snake'!

Neil

Re: Bornean spine-jawed snake (Xenophidion acanthognathus)

PostPosted: Sun Apr 16, 2017 7:37 pm
by Frédéric Seyffarth
Just "wow!" :shock:
That's why fieldherping is so exciting!
Congratulations for this exceptionnal find!

Re: Bornean spine-jawed snake (Xenophidion acanthognathus)

PostPosted: Sun Apr 16, 2017 9:30 pm
by Guillaume Gomard
Excellent, Neil :!: You were extremely lucky to find this species. I hope you will find some time to make a summary about this "re-discovery" (habitat description, photographs of the specimen, etc.) and make it accessible to all (a good option would be to make a pdf that can be easily found on the web, and to upload your pictures to a well-referenced database, such as the Reptile Database).

Thanks again for sharing these pics on the forum!

Re: Bornean spine-jawed snake (Xenophidion acanthognathus)

PostPosted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 6:31 am
by Jürgen Gebhart
Big congrats!!!

Great Job!!!

Re: Bornean spine-jawed snake (Xenophidion acanthognathus)

PostPosted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 8:36 am
by Niklas Ban
Great job!

Re: Bornean spine-jawed snake (Xenophidion acanthognathus)

PostPosted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 9:39 am
by Neil Rowntree
Thanks guys - the magic of the tropics!

Guillaume, currently I've got as far as a distributional note - this can be found in the current Herpetological Review 48(1), 2017.

Neil

Re: Bornean spine-jawed snake (Xenophidion acanthognathus)

PostPosted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 2:40 pm
by Ray Hamilton
Hats off to you.

I wondered what was going to fit that gap in your report - worth waiting for!

Re: Bornean spine-jawed snake (Xenophidion acanthognathus)

PostPosted: Mon Apr 17, 2017 8:45 pm
by Evgeny Kotelevsky
Congrats!!! Borneo is a paradise for a field herper :)

Re: Bornean spine-jawed snake (Xenophidion acanthognathus)

PostPosted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 3:35 pm
by Bobby Bok
What a find, amazing! Congratulations on this find!