Barkudia insularis is a limbless lizard

Lizard

Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with nearly 3800 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica as well as most oceanic island chains...

 which was described in 1917 by Nelson Annandale

Nelson Annandale

Thomas Nelson Annandale CIE was a Scottish zoologist, entomologist and anthropologist.The eldest son of Thomas Annandale, the regius professor of clinical surgery at the University of Edinburgh, Nelson was educated at Rugby School, Balliol College, Oxford, and the University of Edinburgh.Annandale...

 and rediscovered in the wild in 2003. Little is known about the species but it is believed to be found only in the mangrove

Mangrove

Mangroves are various kinds of trees up to medium height and shrubs that grow in saline coastal sediment habitats in the tropics and subtropics – mainly between latitudes N and S...

 habitats near Barkud Island in Chilka Lake

Chilka Lake

Chilka Lake is a brackish water lagoon, spread over the Puri, Khurda and Ganjam districts of Orissa state on the east coast of India, at the mouth of the Daya River, flowing into the Bay of Bengal...

, Orissa

Orissa

Orissa , officially Odisha since Nov 2011, is a state of India, located on the east coast of India, by the Bay of Bengal. It is the modern name of the ancient nation of Kalinga, which was invaded by the Maurya Emperor Ashoka in 261 BC. The modern state of Orissa was established on 1 April...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. The lizard looks like a large earthworm

Earthworm

Earthworm is the common name for the largest members of Oligochaeta in the phylum Annelida. In classical systems they were placed in the order Opisthopora, on the basis of the male pores opening posterior to the female pores, even though the internal male segments are anterior to the female...

 and lives in the subsoil and probably feeds on small arthropod

Arthropod

An arthropod is an invertebrate animal having an exoskeleton , a segmented body, and jointed appendages. Arthropods are members of the phylum Arthropoda , and include the insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and others...

s.

The holotype

Holotype

A holotype is a single physical example of an organism, known to have been used when the species was formally described. It is either the single such physical example or one of several such, but explicitly designated as the holotype...

 was found in loose earth near the roots of a banyan tree of Badakuda island of Chilika lagoon in 1917. The most recent report of the species is from 2003.

Taxonomic description

Barkudia (Annandale, Rec. Ind. Mus. xiii, 1917 p. 20 - type species insularis) is characterised by the palatine bones not meeting on the mid-line of the palate, which is toothless; nostril between the nasal and the rostral in an emargination of the latter; supranasals present; pre-frontals and frontoparietals absent; body elongated; no limbs;

Barkudia insularis has the snout depressed, obtusely pointed, projecting strongly beyond the labial margin; rostral large, emarginate laterally to receive the nasal shield; supranasals large, in contact with one another and with the first labial; fronto-nasal broader than long, larger than the frontal; interparietal much larger than the frontal; parietals narrow, obliquely placed, in contact with one another behind it; 3 supraoculars, the first entering the supraciliarly margin, the first two in contact with the frontal; 1 large supraciliary in the angle formed by the 3 suboculars; nasal shield comparatively large, the nostril at its anterior extremeity; 1 large loreal; a preocular; lower eyelid composed of 2 or 3 opaque scales; upper eyelid vestigial; 4 supralabials, the third below the eye; ear-opening minute; a singly azygous postmenta; body elongate with 140 ventral scales between the post-mental and pre-anal plates; 20 smooth scales round the mid body. Tip of the tail blunt and not much narrower than the base of the tail.

Light brown above, each dorsal scale with a central dot; altogether thee form 12 or 14 longitudinal lines down the back and along the tail; lower parts whitish; top of head clouded with brown. The type was dug from loose earth at the root of a banyan tree. A second was seen in the same locality by Frederic Henry Gravely in the rainy season of 1919. It burrowed rapidly into the ground.