Assam keelback snake rediscovered after 129 year
The Keelback snake species Herpetoreas pealii, also known as Assam Keelback, which was first seen in 1891, has been rediscovered in Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border after 129 years. The rare snake species was first seen in 1891 when a British tea-planter Samuel Edward Peal collected two male specimens from upper Assam's Sivasagar district. While one of the two original specimens was kept in the Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata, the other was kept in the Natural History Museum, London. The species was rediscovered on the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border in September 2018 when a team from Dehradun-based Wildlife Institute of India (WII) was retracing steps of the Abor Expedition, a military expedition by the British against Abors in 1911. The details of the rediscovery of the snake species were published in Vertebrate Zoology , an international journal published from Germany "To commemorate the Abor Expedition, which besides being a military campaign had resulted in the collectio...