B R E V I O R A. MuseiLim of Comparative Zoology o us ISSN 0006-9698 Cambridge, Mass. 2 February 1994 Number 497 CHELID TURTLES OF THE AUSTRALASIAN ARCHIPELAGO: I. A NEW SPECIES OF CHELODINA FROM SOUTHEASTERN PAPUA NEW GUINEA Anders G. J. Rhodin' Abstract. A new species of Chelodina (Testudines: Pleurodira: Chelidae) is described from the Kemp Welch River drainage basin. Central Province, south-eastern Papua New Guinea, where it occurs in a restricted distribution. It is endemic to Papua New Guinea and isolated from other members of the genus. It is superficially most similar to Chelodina novaegiiineae of southwestern Papua New Guinea, but osteologically more closely related to C. longicollis of eastern Australia. The recently described species Chelodina reimanni from southeastern Irian Jaya, Indonesia, is most closely related to C. novaeguineae. INTRODUCTION The side-necked turtles of the family Chelidae (Testudines: Pleurodira) from the New Guinean region of the Australasian Archipelago remain one of the most poorly known turtle faunas of the world. The zoogeography and the diversity of the snake-necked chelid turtle genus Chelodina that inhabits this region of eastern Indonesia and Papua New Guinea have received some attention, but are far from fully resolved. Until the latter part of this century only two species of Chelodina were known from the regions north of Australia: Chelodina novaeguineae Boulenger, 1888 and Chelodina siebenrocki Werner, 1901. Chelodina no-vaeguineae was known only from southwestern Papua New Guin-ea and adjacent southeastern Indonesian Irian Jaya, as well as from Roti Island west of Timor in Indonesia, with C siebenrocki supposedly occurring only in "Deutsch-Neu-Guinea," the former German colony comprising the northern half of present-day Pa-pua New Guinea. In 1976 Rhodin and Mittermeier described the ' Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachu-setts, and Chelonian Research Foundation, Lunenburg. Massachusetts.
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