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A small snake about 25 cms with coloration very similar to the photo. Observed over bushes on a night with light rain. 500 m altitude in tropical forests of the Colombian Pacific coast and foothill of the Western Andes. Highway to the city of Buenaventura.

This is the holotype.

We found a couple of these snakes under a piles of cut logs.

There were apparently a couple of others in museum collections but it was undescribed at the time (it was regarded as a population of Rhadinaea hempsteadae). It was described in 1995 by Kizirian and Mendelson.

These are probably the first photos taken of live specimens? The photos were all taken in the field (ignore the 2019 date on the third photo, all were taken on 10 May, 1989.

Two species, Pseudalsophis thomasi and P. hephaestus, are listed for Santiago by Zaher et al. (2018) Origin and hidden diversity within the poorly known Galapagos snake radiation (Serpentes: Dipsadidae), Systematics and Biodiversity 16:614–642. This one, which obviously had a recent meal, resembles the photos of P. thomasi, which is larger than P. hephaestus.

MHNLS 19253

Rojas-Runjaic, F. J. M. & E. E. Infante-Rivero. 2018. Redescubrimiento de las serpientes Rhinobothryum bovallii (Andersson, 1916) y Plesiodipsas perijanensis (Alemán, 1953) en Venezuela. Memoria de la Fundación La Salle de Ciencias Naturales, 76(184): 83-92.
http://saber.ucv.ve/ojs/index.php/rev_mem/article/view/15543