Posted by:
paalexan
at Sat Oct 11 00:17:45 2003 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by paalexan ]
`I could be overstaying my welcome here, but could you shed a little light as to what inferences were made by Kluge to distinguish Leiopython so far from Liasis?'
I'm not him, but I got a chance to look at Kluge's paper... Kluge's study is based on skeletal features and scalation. The way he's written it out is a little confusing for direct comparisons betwen genera, but it looks like Leiopython is distinguished from Liasis by:
having 7 or 8 rather than 5 ot 6 palatine teeth;
having the orbital separated from rather than in contact with the ectopterygoid and/or maxilla;
having the choanal process of the palatine make contact with rather than separated from the vomer;
having the posterior margin of the choanal process slightly concave rather than deeply concave;
having the height of the dentary teeth change markedly rather than only slightly;
having the first geneial scale long rather than short compared to other throat scales;
having an apical sensory organ present on many posterior upper-body scales
having a tall and sharp rather than low and relatively round ridge present on the mid-dorsal surface of the median end of the postorbital;
having the rostral scale with rather than without thermoreceptive pits.
To be honest, a lot of those characters don't mean anything to me...
Patrick Alexander
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RE: Python classification - paalexan, Sat Oct 11 00:17:45 2003