All Angles Creatures
Squamata · ScincidaeEntry 12,875 of 21,572

Reptilia · Squamata

Melanoseps uzungwensisLoveridge, 1942

Udzungwa Limbless Skink

No photograph of this species exists under a license anyone may reuse. It gets the same page regardless.

A skink from the Afrotropic region, reaching 210 mm snout to vent.

ReptiliaSquamataScincidaeMelanoseps

We do not have enough on this species yet

Catalogue of Life records this animal’s name, its family and where it sits in the tree of life. Beyond that, only 25 facts are on record — no diet, no lifespan, nothing we would be willing to publish as an entry.

So this page waits here rather than pretending to be one. It is not listed and not submitted to search engines. If you know this animal and can point us at a published source, we would rather have it right than have it soon.

Grows to
210mm
greatest recorded
Weighs up to
20.01g
greatest
Red List
Endangered
Body length across Scincidae

Longer than 97% of all skinks anyone has measured.

97% of 1,710 species are smaller3% larger
24 mmthe whole family, smallest to largest500 mm

The bar is the rank itself: its length is the share of the family this animal exceeds. The chart below is the family’s real spread, on a logarithmic scale because body length here runs from 24 to 500 mm. The solid rule is this animal. Every bar is a count of real species, and nothing on this figure is estimated.

What is known

25 sourced facts, each taken from a named scientific dataset. How to read these.

Cited from a dataset unless a row is marked otherwise.

Two of these figures disagree

Body mass (adult female, mean) is given as 57.8, and Body mass (greatest) as 20 — but an average female cannot outweigh the heaviest animal recorded. They come from different sources and both are shown exactly as those sources give them.

Standing in the world

Still living
Extant
Conservation status
Endangered
Status assessed · the year the Red List last looked
2014
Red List criteria
B1ab(iii)

The animal itself

Limbs
None
Venomous
No
Fangs
None

Size

Length snout to vent · greatest recorded
210mm8.25 in

max 210 mm SVL (Feldman et al. 2016)

Length snout to vent · adult female mean
154mm6 in
Largest female · snout to vent
154mm6 in

snout-vent length; the source column mixes this with straight carapace length

Body mass · greatestcomputeddisputed
20.01g0.71 oz

computed from length by a family-level allometric equation, not weighed

Body mass · adult female, meanmeasureddisputed
57.8g2 oz

How it lives

Habitat
Forest, Grassland
Biome
Tropical & Subtropical Moist Broadleaf Forests
Region
Afrotropic
Mainland or island
Mainland
Range size
9898km²

Breeding

Clutches in a year
1per year

Naming and history

Suborder
Sauria
Infraorder
Scincoidea
Subspecies
No
Described by
Loveridge
Moved to another genus · since it was first described
No
Described in
1942
Type locality
Tanzania

What nobody knows

These are not gaps in our research. No scientific dataset records them for this species — and saying so is information you cannot get from a reference that simply leaves a field out.

  • Length snout to vent · adult male mean
  • Length snout to vent · adult mean
  • Length nose to tail · greatest recorded
  • Female length · mean, nose to tail
  • Length nose to tail · adult male mean
  • Length nose to tail · adult mean
  • Largest male · snout to vent
  • Largest female · shell length
  • Largest male · shell length
  • Hatchling length · snout to vent
  • Hatchling length · nose to tail
  • Largest juvenile · snout to vent
  • Largest juvenile · shell length
  • Egg length
  • Egg width
  • Body mass · a typical adult
  • Body mass at hatching
  • Longest recorded life
  • Preferred body temperature · chosen in a laboratory gradient
  • Body temperature when active · measured in the wild
  • Diet
  • Eats arthropods
  • Eats vertebrates
  • Eats plant matter
  • How it hunts
  • Active
  • Where it lives
  • Reproduction
  • How the young develop
  • Gestation or incubation
  • Average clutch
  • Smallest clutch recorded
  • Largest clutch recorded
  • Mean clutch · smallest reported
  • Mean clutch · largest reported
  • Clutches a year · fewest
  • Clutches a year · most
  • First breeds from · youngest recorded
  • First breeds by · oldest recorded
  • Hatchling length · smallest recorded
  • Hatchling length · largest recorded
  • Age at first breeding · female
  • Mature from · youngest recorded
  • Mature by · oldest recorded
  • Size at maturity · smallest recorded
  • Size at maturity · largest recorded
  • Body temp in the wild · lowest mean recorded
  • Body temp in the wild · highest mean recorded
  • Colour on the back
  • Pattern on the back
  • Pupil
  • Sex decided by
  • Population trend
  • Active season · shortest recorded
  • Active season · longest recorded
  • Density · lowest recorded
  • Density · highest recorded
  • Home range · largest recorded
  • Active in
  • Lowest it lives · above sea level
  • Highest it lives · above sea level

Others in Scincidae

Sources

  1. Meiri, S. (2024). SquamBase — a database of squamate (Reptilia: Squamata) traits. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Public domain (CC0).
  2. Oskyrko, O. et al. (2024). ReptTraits: a comprehensive dataset of ecological traits in reptiles. Scientific Data. Used under CC BY 4.0.
  3. Catalogue of Life (dataset 3LR), used under CC BY.