Vol. 32, pp. 145-148 September 30, 1919 PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON A NEW ROCK IGUANA FROM PORTO RICO. BY THOMAS BARBOUR. In 1917 Dr. G. M. Allen and Lieut. James Lee Peters visited Porto Rico in the interest of the Museum of Comparative Zool-ogy. They explored with great success a large cave near Ciales and found in the floor, under an opening in the high domed roof, a considerable number of both mammal and reptile bones. The latter have recently been sorted out and substantiate the statement which I made some time ago (Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., 30, 1917, p. 98) when 1 said that I believed Dr. Allen had found jaws of Cyclura. In 1918 Miller (Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., 54, 1918, p. 509, pi. 81) named Cyclura mattea from shell heaps in St. Thomas, — a species which proves to be very closely related indeed to the form which I am about to name. It is perhaps not remarkable that the Rock Iguana evidently became extinct in Porto Rico at an early time. It was probably exterminated by the considerable population of Porto Rican Indians before the Conquest, because no tradition of its existence seems to remain amongst either living inhabitants or in the literature. The description of this species likewise fills the last consider-able gap in the known distribution of the genus and confirms the surmise ventured by Mr. Noble and myself that Rock Iguanas had formerly been much more widely distributed than their present dispersal would indicate. The limits of the range of the genus coincided exactly with those of the Greater Antil-lean subregion, including the Bahaman province and thus the distribution of the genus becomes at once more suggestive as it becomes more completely definable. 29— Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. 32, 1919. (145)
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