3 
At the same station on 20 February 1972, we collected a 
specimen of Phrynops nasutus wermuthi . MZUSP 2639. This specimen 
is cited by Pritchard and Trebbau (loc. cit .: 388) with no 
reservations as to the locality. In fairness, I do not think they 
would advocate the presence of P. n- wermuthi in Nova Olinda, 
Ceara. 
We have another specimen of G. carbonaria from the same 
general area. MZUSP 2896 (field number 75.0899) was also bought by 
myself for the kitchen on October 30, 1975, from Mundurucu Indians, 
at their village Coat* (also spelled QuatA, 04°13'S, 59°16'W) on the 
Rio Canuma. It is a female and had nine large and six small eggs. 
Again the head and shell are preserved, and they perfectly fulfill 
Williams' criteria for carbonaria . 
On November 17, 1984, a Museum party collected one female G. 
carbonaria (MZUSP 3086) crossing the road close to the town of 
Colorado d'Oeste (13°06'S, 61°24'W) in Rondonia. 
Considering the extraordinary growth of the city of Manaus in 
the last 30 years, this locality will not be discussed here, but it 
remains to consider the MCZ specimen from Villa Bella cited by 
Williams (1960). Villa Bella, as Pritchard and Trebbau very 
properly state, is the name of a town in Bolivia. Meaning 
approximately "Pleasantville", it is also the name of a few dozen 
other localities in Latin America. Thus, the path of its 
identification should be not through simple reference to current 
gazetteers, but through the pedigree of the specimen. This 
specimen was donated by the Rev. J.C. Fletcher (E.E. Williams, 
pers. comm.), therefore the locality is in the Lower Amazon (see 
text and notes in Kidder and Fletcher, 1941). The locality, an 
important one, then known as Villa Bella is now Parintins (02°37'S, 
56°44'W) . 
There are thus at least three specimens of Geochelone 
carbonaria . both old and recent, from the state of Amazonas, and 
one from Rondonia; Pritchard and Trebbau's tenet cannot be upheld. 
One wonders what would have led them to take such an extreme 
position, dismissing so readily data from two collections known as 
reliable. It would seem that only a strong theoretical point or a 
very ample empirical basis would justify such an action. A 
theoretical approach is of course justified in the case of 
restricted distributions in Amazonia, but none is expounded in the 
text. On the other hand, an examination of the locality records 
indicates that the empirical basis is poor. 
I have plotted (Map 1) over Pritchard and Trebbau's figure 36, 
