''Barkudia'' is a little-known

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

skink Skinks are lizards belonging to the family Scincidae, a family in the infraorder Scincomorpha. With more than 1,500 described species across 100 different taxonomic genera, the family Scincidae is one of the most diverse families of lizards. Ski ...

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. These lizards are thought to be semi-

fossorial A fossorial () animal is one adapted to digging which lives primarily, but not solely, underground. Some examples are badgers, naked mole-rats, clams, meerkats, and mole salamanders, as well as many beetles, wasps, and bees. Prehistoric eviden ...

, and living in

coastal The coast, also known as the coastline or seashore, is defined as the area where land meets the ocean, or as a line that forms the boundary between the land and the coastline. The Earth has around of coastline. Coasts are important zones in n ...

areas of the east coast of India. Almost nothing is known about the natural history of this genus, except for classical taxonomic texts. There are two species: *''

Barkudia insularis ''Barkudia insularis'' commonly known as the Madras spotted skink is a critically endangered limbless skink which was described in 1917 by Nelson Annandale and rediscovered in the wild in 2003. Little is known about the species but it was p ...

'' Annandale, 1917 — Madras spotted skink, distributed in the

Circar Coast Sarkar ( hi, , ur, , pa, ਸਰਕਾਰ, bn, সরকার also spelt Circar) is a historical administrative division, used mostly in the Mughal Empire. It was a division of a Subah or province. A sarkar was further divided into Mahallas o ...

(

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

) *'' Barkudia melanosticta'' (Schneider, 1801) — Visakhapatnam limbless skink, Russell's legless skink, distributed in parts of

Coromandel Coast The Coromandel Coast is the southeastern coastal region of the Indian subcontinent, bounded by the Utkal Plains to the north, the Bay of Bengal to the east, the Kaveri delta to the south, and the Eastern Ghats to the west, extending over an ...

References

Barkudia Lizard genera Endemic fauna of India Taxa named by Nelson Annandale {{Skink-stub