''Acontias breviceps'', the shorthead lance skink or shortheaded legless skink, is a species of viviparous, legless, fossorial lizards occurring along the southern and eastern sections of the

Great Escarpment The Great Escarpment is a major topographical feature in Africa that consists of steep slopes from the high central Southern African plateauAtlas of Southern Africa. (1984). p. 13. Reader's Digest Association, Cape Town downward in the directio ...

in South Africa. It may grow up to 10 cm long. This skink was first collected in 1925 by Robert Essex at Hogsback in the

Amatola Mountains Amatola, Amatole or Amathole are a range of densely forested mountains, situated in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. The word ''Amathole'' means ‘calves’ in Xhosa, and Amathole District Municipality, which lies to the south, is named ...

in the

Eastern Cape The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are East London and Gqeberha. The second largest province in the country (at 168,966 km2) after Northern Cape, it was formed in ...

at an elevation of some 6000 ft. A disjunct second population exist in the Transvaal

Drakensberg The Drakensberg (Afrikaans: Drakensberge, Zulu: uKhahlambha, Sotho: Maluti) is the eastern portion of the Great Escarpment, which encloses the central Southern African plateau. The Great Escarpment reaches its greatest elevation – within th ...

. Essex collected for the

Albany Museum The Albany Museum, South Africa is situated in Grahamstown in South Africa, is affiliated to Rhodes University and dates back to 1855,Chinsamy, Anusuya. (1997). "Albany Museum, Grahamstown, South Africa." ''Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs''. Edited by ...

Grahamstown Makhanda, also known as Grahamstown, is a town of about 140,000 people in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. It is situated about northeast of Port Elizabeth and southwest of East London, Eastern Cape, East London. Makhanda is the lar ...

, but a fire in 1941 destroyed most specimens and records."A Biographical Dictionary of Contributors to the Natural History of the Free State and Lesotho" - Rodney Moffett

References

Bibliography

*Daniels, Savel R.; Neil J. L. Heideman, Martin G. J. Hendricks, Keith A. Crandall 2006. Taxonomic subdivisions within the fossorial skink subfamily Acontinae (Squamata: Scincidae) reconsidered: a multilocus perspective. Zoologica Scripta 35 (4): 353 *Essex, R. 1925. Descriptions of two new species of the genus ''Acontias'' and notes on some other lizards found in the Cape Province. Rec. Albany Mus. 3: 332–342. *Greer, Allen E. 2001. Distribution of maximum snout-vent length among species of Scincid lizards. Journal of Herpetology 35 (3): 383-395 *Lamb, T.; Biswas, S. & Bauer, A.M. 2010. A phylogenetic reassessment of African fossorial skinks in the subfamily Acontinae (Squamata: Scincidae): evidence for parallelism and polyphyly. Zootaxa 2657: 33–46

breviceps ''Breviceps'' is a genus of frogs in the family Brevicipitidae. Species in the genus ''Breviceps'' are commonly known as rain frogs or short-headed frogs. They occur in arid to semiarid climates of East Africa and Southern Africa. Taxonomy The ...

Skinks of Africa Endemic reptiles of South Africa Reptiles described in 1925 Taxa named by Robert Essex (herpetologist) {{skink-stub