Herpetofauna of the Wood Mountain Formation (Upper Miocene) of Saskatchewan

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Abstract
An Upper Miocene deposit, the Kleinfelder Farm locality of the Wood Mountain Formation near Rockglen, Saskatchewan, yielded two anurans, an unidentified turtle, an unidentified crocodilian, two lizards, and five snakes. All of the identifiable forms, with the exception of two colubrid snakes, represent living genera, and some are close to modern subgenera or to modern species. A species of glass lizard (Ophisaurus) and a genus of racer-like colubrid snake are new. The glass lizard may be ancestral to the two modern species, O. ventralis and O. attenuatus, but the affinities of the racer-like colubrid are not well understood. The climate of the region must have been much warmer than today and east and west rainfall zonation on the continent may have been less pronounced than at present. The Kleinfelder Farm locality herpetofauna shows similarities to the Norden Bridge Quarry herpetofauna of the Valentine Formation of Brown County, Nebraska, but the Kleinfelder site may be somewhat older.

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