Critically Endangered
Jamaican giant galliwasp
Celestus occiduus
Jamaican giant galliwasp is a lizard or snake in the family Diploglossidae — Celestus occiduus, recorded as Critically Endangered and tied to Jamaica.
Appearance
The tail was laterally compressed and the light brown body had about fifteen cross bands.
The Jamaican galliwasp was the largest anguid skink on the island with a head-body length of 32 cms.
Range and habitat
Recent surveys, while extensive, have not yet been exhaustive, given the difficulties of access into and around the Black River Morass, leaving room for some hope that the species may persist.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
Its population was ravaged and likely exterminated by introduced predators like mongooses. Around 30 specimens are known in collections around the world.
Jamaican giant galliwasp is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Jamaican giant galliwasp, Wikidata item Q2700032. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
