Via Tetzoo, a critter that I would love to see on the the Big Bike Ride! Dr. Naish’s post is on speculative, “could yet be discovered” animals that are not already cryptozoological cliches – so no Nessie. The whole thing is a lot of fun but the entry for “A gigantic, predatory, limbed amphisbaenian” really caught my attention.

Among the weirdest of amphisbaenians are the ajolotes (or bipedids), the only extant group to possess limbs. These limbs are not small stumps or flaps (as they are in some other near-limbless, serpentine squamates) but well-developed, clawed forelimbs. According to some phylogenetic models, ajolotes are not the sister-group to limbless amphisbaenians but deeply nested within the limbless clade (Conrad 2008, Videl et al. 2008), in which case their limbedness – if you will – perhaps evolved from limbless ancestors. Add to this the fact that some amphisbaenians are robust-jawed, short-faced predators of vertebrates that ambush prey from beneath the surface and bite chunks from the bodies of surface-dwelling mammals and reptiles.

[…]

So then… where oh where are the giant, limbed, robust-skulled, vertebrate-eating amphisbaenians? By ‘giant’, I am not talking about a graboid-sized monster of several metres (though that would be nice), but a more reasonable animal of a mere 1.5 metres or so. Easily the stuff of nightmares. They could inhabit warm regions of any continent.

So what’re these ajolores? The word references 2 very different animals: the axolotl of Lake Xochimilco (endangered in the wild) and the Mexican mole lizard of Baja California – obv it’s the latter we’re interested in.

Bipes biporus is a small pink worm-like lizard with forellimbs only – no hind legs. Their scalation is segmented and used. peristaltically, to move through burrows. The big digger feet move sand out of the way (see the illustration in the Tetzoo post) and the blunt head helps in their fossorial fun.

I wanna see one!

By marlin harms, CC BY 2.0, Link

And in case ‘graboid‘ doesn’t ring a bell: