T 24 * 9 d ^ UH1VERSITV Of ILLINOIS ZOOLOGICAL SERIES OF FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Volume 24 CHICAGO, OCTOBER 20, 1943 No. 29 AMPHIBIANS AND REPTILES FROM THE SUDAN BY KARL P. SCHMIDT CHIEF CURATOR, DEPARTMENT OF ZOOLOGY A small series of reptiles and amphibians recently acquired by Field Museum of Natural History from Dr. Neal A. Weber, of the University of North Dakota, was collected by him in the Imatong Mountains near the Uganda border of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, in 1939, as a by-product of his entomological collecting. These specimens, though representing only seven species, afford a first glimpse of the herpetological fauna of this well-isolated range, whose upper slopes are covered by mountain rain-forest, while the high peak of Mount Kineti (10,458 feet) is a grassy "bald." The zoogeo-graphic interest of the isolated mountain forests of East Africa is great, involving, as it does, consideration of geologic and climatic i history and differential rates of speciation in plants and various groups of animals. Important contributions to the study of the ! reptilian and amphibian faunas of these forests isolated by open country have been made by Mr. Arthur Loveridge, who has out-lined the problems in the summary report (1933) of his expedition to Tanganyika in 1929. The collection includes specimens of the extremely wide-ranging toad Bufo regularis and of the equally widespread frog Rana mas-careniensis. Two specimens represent the common spiny-footed skink Mabuya varia. These are essentially species of the African savanna, as is the single blind snake, Typhlops punctatus, and they offer no clue to any mountain endemism in the Imatong range. Much more interesting and significant is a single specimen of a small skink from the montane rain-forest, evidently a representative of the African group currently referred to Siaphos, but not identi-fiable with any of the African forms now known. There is also a new dwarf race of chamaeleon, of the Chameleo bitaeniatus series. This species is extensively represented by endemic races on the isolated mountain groups of East Africa. No. 535 331 NAT. H13L
BioStor
