A new species of snake has been identified in the frontier region between Brazil and Venezuela. Baptized as Micrurus pacaraimae, for having been found in the locality of Vila Pacaraima, it is a specimen of a coral snake that can be recognized “by the two color pattern of the rings round the body, the black ones not forming triads and some four times narrower than the red ones, by the absence of supra-anal tubercles, and by the arrangement of the black cephalic hood, joined to the nuchal ring behind the parietal bones,” in accordance with the description by Celso Morato de Carvalho, from the Biology Department of the Federal University of Sergipe and the National Institute of Research on Amazonia. The work is in the article Description of a new species of Micrurus from the State of Roraima, Brazil (Serpents, Elapidae), published in Sundry Papers on Zoology, from the Zoology Museum of the University of São Paulo, a title that has just gone into SciELO’s on-line library. The snakes were collected by the National Institute of Research on Amazonia and the Zoology Museum of the University of São Paulo, in joint projects in the region carried out between 1986 and 1991. According to Carvalho, Micrurus acaraimae has five little light patches on the top of its head, and it was collected on the banks of a little waterway in the region.
Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia [Sundry Papers on Zoology] – vol. 42 – nº 8
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