Coming soon!

This specimen was collected in Jamaica. It was made available to The University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray CT Facility for scanning by Dr. Jessie Maisano of The University of Texas at Austin and Dr. Kevin de Queiroz of the National Museum of Natural History. Funding for scanning and image processing was provided by a National Science Foundation Assembling the Tree of Life grant (EF-0334961), The Deep Scaly Project: Resolving Squamate Phylogeny using Genomic and Morphological Approaches, to Drs. Jacques Gauthier of Yale University, Maureen Kearney of the Field Museum, Jessie Maisano of The University of Texas at Austin, Tod Reeder of San Diego State University, Olivier Rieppel of the Field Museum, Jack Sites of Brigham Young University, and John Wiens of SUNY Stonybrook.

The specimen was scanned by Matthew Colbert on 11 February 2005 along the coronal axis for a total of 570 slices. Each 1024x1024 pixel slice is 0.016 mm thick, with an interslice spacing of 0.016 mm and a field of reconstruction of 5.5 mm.

Literature

Evans, H. E. 1955. The osteology of a worm snake, Typhlops jamaicensis (Shaw). Anatomical Record 122:381-396.

Iordansky, N. N. 1997. Jaw apparatus and feeding mechanics of Typhlops (Ophidia: Typhlopidae): a reconsideration. Russian Journal of Herpetology 4:120-127.

Kley, N. J. 2001. Prey transport mechanisms in blindsnakes and the evolution of unilateral feeding systems in snakes. American Zoologist 41:1321-1337.

List, J. C. 1966. Comparative osteology of the snake families Typhlopidae and Leptotyphlopidae. Ill. Biological Monographs 36:1-112.

McDowell, S. B. 1967. Osteology of the Typhlopidae and Leptotyphlopidae: a critical review. Copeia 1967:686-692.

Rieppel, O. 1979. The braincase of Typhlops and Leptotyphlops (Reptilia: Serpentes). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 65:161-176.

Links

Typhlops jamaicensis page on The Reptile Database

Three-dimensional volumetric renderings of the skull with the jaw removed and of the isolated left mandible. All are less than 2mb.

Skull pitch movie	Skull roll movie
Mandible yaw movie	Mandible pitch movie	Mandible roll movie