Quite simply the single most well-filmed snake documentary I have ever seen, featuring Montpellier Snakes (Malpolon monspessulanus) filmed in Provence, southern France. Caught on film are some of this Psammophiine snake’s unique and interesting social behaviours, such as pair bonding, the male capturing and presenting prey to the female, territorial battling between males, rubbing behaviours using the narial valves and more, as well as exquisitely filmed segments of baby Montpellier Snakes being born. Ir al video.

Over a decade after the last major review of the Cambridge Greensand pterosaurs, their systematics remains one of the most disputed points in pterosaur taxonomy. Ornithocheiridae is still a wastebasket for fragmentary taxa, and some nomenclatural issues are still a problem. Here, the species from the Cretaceous of England that, at some point, were referred in Ornithocheirus, are reviewed. Investigation of the primary literature confirmed that Criorhynchus should be considered an objective junior synonym of Ornithocheirus. Leer más.

De nuevo Eugenio Montelío -va haber que coronarle como herpetólogo mayor- nos envía una nueva cita de culebra de collar (Natrix natrix astreptophora) perteneciente a dos ejemplares que pudo observar el día 5 de junio en una charca cerca de Bergasa. Leer más.

As part of their monographic work, Dumeríl & Bibron (1836) described Gymnodactylus mauritanicus based on specimens originating from Algiers, Algeria. Only a few years later Fitzinger (1843) transferred this species to the genus Saurodactylus, of which it has been part ever since. Bons & Pasteur (1957) attributed the name S. m. brosseti to the allopatric populations occurring in south-western Morocco, which are now recognized at species level as S. brosseti (Bons & Geniez, 1996). Genetic variation within S. mauritanicus is minimal according to mtDNA and nuclear analyses (Rato & Harris, 2008), which is likely a result of the largely continuous distribution and wide environmental tolerances of this species. Leer más.

Las gentes del campo, con su peculiar, rico y curioso vocabulario, han dado en llamar en mi tierra a los sapos, ranos. Con frecuencia, asociados a los machos de las ranas. Y es curioso como tienen una cierta simpatía hacias las ranas y una notable animadversión hacia los sapos, cuando unos y otras son animales muy beneficiosos por el control que sobre los insectos hacen. Leer más.