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Posted by TW Taggart on November 23, 2002 at 18:40:41:
NEWS RELEASE
23 November 2002
The Center for North American Herpetology
www.cnah.org
NEW SNAKE DISCOVERED IN THE U.S.
A new species of snake, Slowinski's Corn Snake, has been discovered in north-central Louisiana and eastern Texas by Dr. Frank T. Burbrink, a professor at the College of Staten Island-CUNY. The new species is formally named Elaphe slowinskii, in memory of the late Dr. Joseph B. Slowinski, who was curator of herpetology at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, and a close friend and colleague of Dr. Burbrink's. Dr. Slowinski was bitten by a venomous Krait in Burma on September 11, 2001, and died the next day.
Published in a print version (Volume 25, Number 3) of the forthcoming December 1, 2002, issue of "Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution," the new species is most closely related to the Eastern Corn Snake (Elaphe guttata), found east of the Mississippi River in the southeastern U.S., and to the Great Plains Rat Snake (Elaphe emoryi), found on the Great Plains from Texas north to Utah and Nebraska.
An electronic color image by noted wildlife photographer Suzanne L. Collins of an adult Slowinski's Corn Snake from Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, can be viewed on the CNAH website.
