Typhlosaurus Wiegmann, 1834

Lamb, Trip, Biswas, Sayantan & Bauer, Aaron M., 2010, A phylogenetic reassessment of African fossorial skinks in the subfamily Acontinae (Squamata: Scincidae): evidence for parallelism and polyphyly, Zootaxa 2657, pp. 33-46 : 42

Typhlosaurus Wiegmann, 1834

Type species: Typhlosaurus cuvierii (Wiegmann, 1834) = Typhlosaurus caecus (Cuvier, 1817)

Content: Typhlosaurus caecus (Cuvier, 1817) , Typhlosaurus vermis Boulenger, 1887 , Typhlosaurus meyeri Boettger, 1894 , Typhlosaurus braini Haacke, 1964 , Typhlosaurus lomiae Haacke, 1986 (specific epithet corrected from lomii by Michels & Bauer 2004).

Diagnosis: Body highly attenuate (SVL 31–62 times body diameter), midbody scale rows 10–14, 189 or more ventral scale rows (except T. lomiae , with 140–181), subcaudals 35–60 (except T. lomiae 24–27), dorsal head shields 20–27, five or more chinshields bordering mental, snout strongly acutely angled, eye covered by scales, dorsal pigmentation absent or, if present, consisting of a single or multiple stripes. Lacrimal absent (except T. meyeri ), jugal absent, 25 or more caudal vertebrae, pectoral girdle nodular or absent.

Material examined. Specimens are listed according to generic and specific revisions proposed in the ‘ Classification of the Acontinae’ section. Museum and collector acronyms are: CAS = California Academy of Sciences, JM = Johan Marais field series, MB = Marius Burger field series, NMB = National Museum, Bloemfontein, PEM = Bayworld [Port Elizabeth Museum], and TM = Transvaal Museum. GenBank accession numbers for the specimen sequences are listed in brackets for the genes Cytb, Co1, 16s, and Rag1, respectively. A single asterisk following the closing bracket indicates those cases where the two specimens (sampled for a given taxon) share identical sequences.