''Schizoglossa gigantea'' is a

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

of large

predatory Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill th ...

, air-breathing, land

slug Slug, or land slug, is a common name for any apparently shell-less terrestrial gastropod mollusc. The word ''slug'' is also often used as part of the common name of any gastropod mollusc that has no shell, a very reduced shell, or only a smal ...

; a

carnivorous A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, ''caro'', genitive ''carnis'', meaning meat or "flesh" and ''vorare'' meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant whose food and energy requirements derive from animal tissues (mainly muscle, fat and other sof ...

terrestrial

pulmonate Pulmonata or pulmonates, is an informal group (previously an order, and before that a subclass) of snails and slugs characterized by the ability to breathe air, by virtue of having a pallial lung instead of a gill, or gills. The group includ ...

gastropod The gastropods (), commonly known as snails and slugs, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (). This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, from freshwater, and from land. T ...

mollusc Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is esti ...

in the family Rhytididae. This species is endemic to the

North Island The North Island, also officially named Te Ika-a-Māui, is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but much less populous South Island by the Cook Strait. The island's area is , making it the world's 14th-largest ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. It was first discovered as '

subfossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in ...

with moa bones, cave near Tahora, Gisborne District.' Further subfossil remains have been found in 'caves at Waikaremoana and Mangaone, near Nuhaka, Hawke Bay.'Powell, A.W.B. 1979: ''New Zealand Mollusca: marine, land and freshwater shells''. William Collins Publishers Ltd: Auckland. It has also been reported as 'living, WNW side of Mt. Hikurangi, East Cape area, 5753 feet.' In 2012, it was also reported that ' ''Schizoglossa gigantea'' has now been found iving?at four localities (G. Barker, personal communication).'Mahlfeld, K. ''et al''. 2012: The conservation status of New Zealand terrestrial Gastropoda excluding ''Powelliphanta''. ''New Zealand entomologist'', 35(2): 103-109.

References

Gastropods of New Zealand Rhytididae Gastropods described in 1930 Taxa named by Arthur William Baden Powell {{Rhytididae-stub