Xenotyphlopidae Vidal et al., 2010, 1843

Szyndlar, Zbigniew & Georgalis, Georgios L., 2023, An illustrated atlas of the vertebral morphology of extant non-caenophidian snakes, with special emphasis on the cloacal and caudal portions of the column, Vertebrate Zoology 73, pp. 717-886 : 717

Xenotyphlopidae Vidal et al., 2010

General information.

Xenotyphlopidae is a recently established family of typhlopoids, comprising a single genus, Xenotyphlops Wallach & Ineich, 1996, with solely one valid species, Xenotyphlops grandidieri (Mocquard, 1905) from Madagascar ( Wallach and Ineich 1996; Vidal et al. 2010; Wegener et al. 2013; Pyron and Wallach 2014). Divergence date estimates suggest that xenotyphlopids split from other scolecophidians already during the Late Cretaceous ( Zheng and Wiens 2016; Miralles et al. 2018; Sidharthan and Karanth 2021).

No xenotyphlopid specimen was available for study. Although the cranial anatomy of this species has been recently described in detail ( Chretien et al. 2019), almost nothing is known about its vertebrae. In fact, the only information on its vertebrae is the X-ray photographs of the anterior trunk portions of the column of the lectotype and paralectotype of Xenotyphlops grandidieri provided by Wallach and Ineich (1996: fig. 2). Unfortunately, that figure is not very informative as the few shown articulated anterior trunk vertebrae are depicted only in lateral view.

Number of vertebrae. Data from literature: Xenotyphlops grandidieri : 264 vertebrae in total ( Wallach and Ineich 1996).