''Tropidonophis mcdowelli'', the northern New Guinea keelback, 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 ...

colubrid Colubridae (, commonly known as colubrids , from la, coluber, 'snake') is a family of snakes. With 249 genera, it is the largest snake family. The earliest species of the family date back to the Oligocene epoch. Colubrid snakes are found on ever ...

snake Snakes are elongated, Limbless vertebrate, limbless, carnivore, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes . Like all other Squamata, squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping Scale (zoology), scales. Ma ...

. It is found in northern

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea). It is a simplified version of ...

in both Papua New Guinea and Western New Guinea. Its

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

honors

Samuel B. McDowell Samuel Booker McDowell Jr. (1928–2014) was an American Herpetology, herpetologist who worked on the comparative anatomy of turtles and snakes, and studied snakes of Oceania. McDowell earned a B.Sc. (1947) and a Ph.D. (1957) from Columbia Uni ...

, American herpetologist (1928–2014). ''Tropidonophis mcdowelli'' occurs in lowland and montane rainforest at elevations of

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''. The comb ...

in association with watercourses.

References

Tropidonophis Snakes of New Guinea Endemic fauna of New Guinea Reptiles of Papua New Guinea Reptiles of Western New Guinea Fauna of northern New Guinea Reptiles described in 1988 Taxa named by Garth Underwood {{Natricinae-stub