Geophis dunni
species of reptile
Geophis dunni, Dunn's earth snake, is a species of enigmatic snake in the family Colubridae. The species is presumably endemic to Nicaragua and is only known from a single specimen discovered in 1932. This specimen, the holotype, was discovered by Karl Patterson Schmidt in the stomach of a Central American coral snake, and no additional specimen has been seen since. The holotype has a snout-to-vent length (SVL) of 310 mm (12 in), a tail length of 57 mm (2.2 in), and a total length of 367 mm (14.4 in). It is part of the Geophis sieboldi species group according to Floyd Leslie Downs. This species was named by Schmidt after fellow herpetologist Emmett Reid Dunn "in allusion to his important contributions to our knowledge of this group of snakes".
This species is little known for several reasons. Snakes of the genus Geophis are fossorial and nocturnal, and as such are rarely observed in their natural habitat even by those actively searching for them. Also, the snakes of this genus form extensive species complexes in which the only way to tell them apart is by slight differences. For example, Geophis dunni differs from other species by having 17 dorsal scale rows, 8 infralabial scales, and 140 ventral scales.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Geophis dunni” is species of reptile. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Geophis, dunni and species, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3101239. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1932.
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This entry incorporates text from “Geophis dunni” 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.