5 (Uai |-(,s4 "Suutv/CaJ. FIELDIANA • ZOOLOGY Ptiblished by 3 FIELD MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY Volume 51 July 24, 1967 No. 5 A New Colubrid Snake of the Genus Stegonotus ^,AUU»uu. -0..U from Borneo AR 2 b 1968 \mm Robert F. Inger Curator, Division of Amphibians and Reptiles Two specimens of Stegonottts are now known from Borneo, one from Mount Kina Balu (6°03'N, 116°32'E), Sabah, and one from Nanga Tekalit (1°38'N, 113°35'E), Sarawak. The skull of the latter specimen agrees with the description (Dum^ril and Bibron, 1854, p. 681) of the skull of S. muelleri, the type species. The parietal is very broad and flat with a weak median crest immediately before the supraoccipitals. The maxilla is only slightly curved and lacks a dia-stema; the maxillary teeth increase in size to the middle of the row, then decrease, and finally after a very short interval increase sharply at the end of the row. The palato-pterygoidal tooth row contains 49 teeth (17+32); Dum^ril and Bibron counted 47 (19+28). The head is slightly wider than the neck. The eyes are small and have vertically elliptic pupils. The dorsal scales are smooth and the ven-trals angulate laterally. The only character in which they differ from the diagnosis of Stegonotus presented by Boulenger (1893) is in the absence of apical pits on the dorsal scales. In this regard, however, they resemble the type species S. muelleri. The Kina Balu snake has been considered to be conspecific with the Philippine species, S. muelleri (Leviton, 1963). The Bornean snakes are, indeed, very similar to the Philippine form (six exam-ined), but differ in a number of ways. As the Bornean specimens were collected in different years (1951, 1963) and from localities 560 km. apart, differences between them, on the one hand, and the Philippine snakes, on the other, are not the result of peculiarities of one brood or one extremely local population. The ventral coloration of the Bornean snakes is homogeneous throughout the length of the body. The anterior half or three-Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-28267 ^^^ ^^ uii«& No. 1028 77 FEB 7 1968 UBRARY
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