''Xenelaphis ellipsifer'', the ornate brown snake, or ocellated brown snake, is a large species of snake, up to long, which is found in Malaysia and Indonesia. It has a rounded snout, its head is distinct from its neck, and it has protruding large round eyes. The top of the snake (the dorsum) is orange-red in color, and along the sides of its body are large black-edged squarish brown blotches separated by cream colored spaces. It has a yellow upper lip. ''X.ellipsifer'' is an aquatic species, found in forests at above sea level. The first description of this snake was published in 1900 by

George Albert Boulenger George Albert Boulenger (19 October 1858 – 23 November 1937) was a Belgian-British zoologist who described and gave scientific names to over 2,000 new animal species, chiefly fish, reptiles, and amphibians. Boulenger was also an active botani ...

, who found a single specimen in a fish trap above the Sarawak River in Malaysia. This snake became the

type specimen In biology, a type is a particular wiktionary:en:specimen, specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to a ...

of the species, and is held at the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

in London. Although this is a rare snake which has been described in few published reports, it is classified on the

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...

as a species of

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...

, since it is widely distributed in protected areas, and is therefore not under threat.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q3570866 Xenelaphis Reptiles described in 1900 Taxa named by George Albert Boulenger