peterjohnson64
Very Well-Known Member
Back in the days when I was learning Wordperfect 4.2 and Dbase 3 at Uni I was learning about herps by reading Harold Coggers ?Reptiles & Amphibians of Australia Volume 1?. I guess it was a bit of a bible for amateurs like me at the time.
But since I came on to APS I have noticed that everything I knew about reptiles was actually wrong. The latest being my Taipan/Fierce snake incident. So I thought I had better get back to the books. Well, hasn?t a lot changed since 1990?? I will run through some of the scientific ?Facts? of the 1988 edition of Coggers book. Quite interesting.
1. The fierce snake was Parademansia Microlepidpta and at the time Covacevich et al regarded it as congeneric with the taipan. Obviously, they won. But, before then, it wasn?t a taipan. AND Oxyuranus Scutellus was a taipan, not a coastal taipan.
2. Carpet/Diamond Pythons. There were only 3 sub-species of Morelia Spilota. Spilota Spilota ? being the Diamond (but not the high yellow ones), Spilota Imbricata (southern WA) and Spilota Variegata (the rest). I am still coming to grips with all these new carpet pythons.
3. Dymond Pythons from the Gosford region were basically the same as the Wollongong ones.
3. Stimmies/Macs/Childrens were all the one species called Childrens Pythons with a scientific name Liasis Childreni. So I guess they were also Olive pythons in a way.
4. Chondropython viridis. Green Tree Pythons before they were genus Morelia.
5. The white lipped python of the Torres Straight islands did not have a common name. It was merely Liasis Albertisii.
6. A Shingleback was Trachydosaurus Rugosus. Although I did realise it was reclassified as a blue tongue in the 90?s.
7. Bearded Dragons were Amphibolurus, not Pogona.
8. No rough scaled pythons existed.
9. and now the big one. The range of the Cane Toad. Take a line from Normanton in the north to Tweed Heads in the south and that was basically the western limit. How things change.
This is a 650 page book and all I did was look up the things I had personally made mistakes about in posts or had noted in my head that were different from what I knew. It would be interesting to know how many more changes have been made in such a short period.
But since I came on to APS I have noticed that everything I knew about reptiles was actually wrong. The latest being my Taipan/Fierce snake incident. So I thought I had better get back to the books. Well, hasn?t a lot changed since 1990?? I will run through some of the scientific ?Facts? of the 1988 edition of Coggers book. Quite interesting.
1. The fierce snake was Parademansia Microlepidpta and at the time Covacevich et al regarded it as congeneric with the taipan. Obviously, they won. But, before then, it wasn?t a taipan. AND Oxyuranus Scutellus was a taipan, not a coastal taipan.
2. Carpet/Diamond Pythons. There were only 3 sub-species of Morelia Spilota. Spilota Spilota ? being the Diamond (but not the high yellow ones), Spilota Imbricata (southern WA) and Spilota Variegata (the rest). I am still coming to grips with all these new carpet pythons.
3. Dymond Pythons from the Gosford region were basically the same as the Wollongong ones.
3. Stimmies/Macs/Childrens were all the one species called Childrens Pythons with a scientific name Liasis Childreni. So I guess they were also Olive pythons in a way.
4. Chondropython viridis. Green Tree Pythons before they were genus Morelia.
5. The white lipped python of the Torres Straight islands did not have a common name. It was merely Liasis Albertisii.
6. A Shingleback was Trachydosaurus Rugosus. Although I did realise it was reclassified as a blue tongue in the 90?s.
7. Bearded Dragons were Amphibolurus, not Pogona.
8. No rough scaled pythons existed.
9. and now the big one. The range of the Cane Toad. Take a line from Normanton in the north to Tweed Heads in the south and that was basically the western limit. How things change.
This is a 650 page book and all I did was look up the things I had personally made mistakes about in posts or had noted in my head that were different from what I knew. It would be interesting to know how many more changes have been made in such a short period.