A pickled snake, now identified as the Nyanga rinkhals, a new species Jens Reissig
A hooded, venom-spitting snake that was pickled and has been at a museum in Zimbabwe for 40 years has been identified as a new species based on DNA analysis.
The snake, named the Nyanga rinkhals (Hemachatus nyangensis), comes from the mountainous Nyanga region of Zimbabwe, but it may have already gone extinct.
A female specimen kept at the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo was found run over in 1982. It was initially identified as another rinkhals species, Hemachatus haemachatus, that occurs in South…
