Xenotyphlopidae Vidal et al., 2010

General information.

Xenotyphlopidae is a recently established family of typhlopoids, comprising a single genus, Xenotyphlops Wallach & Ineich, 1996, with solely one valid species, Xenotyphlops grandidieri (Mocquard, 1905) from Madagascar (Wallach and Ineich 1996; Vidal et al. 2010; Wegener et al. 2013; Pyron and Wallach 2014). Divergence date estimates suggest that xenotyphlopids split from other scolecophidians already during the Late Cretaceous (Zheng and Wiens 2016; Miralles et al. 2018; Sidharthan and Karanth 2021).

No xenotyphlopid specimen was available for study. Although the cranial anatomy of this species has been recently described in detail (Chretien et al. 2019), almost nothing is known about its vertebrae. In fact, the only information on its vertebrae is the X-ray photographs of the anterior trunk portions of the column of the lectotype and paralectotype of Xenotyphlops grandidieri provided by Wallach and Ineich (1996: fig. 2). Unfortunately, that figure is not very informative as the few shown articulated anterior trunk vertebrae are depicted only in lateral view.

Number of vertebrae. Data from literature: Xenotyphlops grandidieri: 264 vertebrae in total (Wallach and Ineich 1996).