Aspidura
genus of snakes
Aspidura is a genus of snakes in the subfamily Natricinae of the Family Colubridae. The genus is endemic to island of Sri Lanka. Member species are commonly known as rough-sided snakes, except for A. ceylonensis, which is commonly known as the black-spined snake and was formerly in the genus Haplocercus. The genus Aspidura comprises nine species, with the latest having been discovered in 2019.
Species
The following species are recognized as being valid.
Aspidura brachyorrhos (F. Boie, 1827) – Boie's rough-sided snake
Aspidura ceylonensis (Günther, 1858) – black-spined snake
Aspidura copei Günther, 1864 – Cope's rough-sided snake
Aspidura deraniyagalae Gans & Fetcho, 1982 – Deraniyagala's rough-sided snake
Aspidura desilvai M. Wickramasinghe, Bandara, Vidanapathirana & N. Wickramasinghe, 2019 – De Silva's rough-sided snake
Aspidura drummondhayi Boulenger, 1904 – Drummond-Hay's rough-sided snake
Aspidura guentheri Ferguson, 1876 – Günther's rough-sided snake
Aspidura ravanai M. Wickramasinghe, Vidanapathirana, Kandambi, Pyron & N. Wickramasinghe, 2017 – Ravana's rough-sided snake
Aspidura trachyprocta Cope, 1860 – common rough-sided snake
References
Further reading
Wagler JG (1830). Natürliches System der Amphibien, mit vorangehender Classification der Säugthiere und Vögel. Ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Zoologie. Munich, Stuttgart and Tübingen: J.G. Cotta. vi + 354 pp.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Aspidura” as genus of snakes. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as genus of snakes. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2469462. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2019, 1827, 1858 and 1864.
Current terminology should not be projected backward without checking the classification used when the underlying evidence was created. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aspidura” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.