INTRODUCTION 



The Royal Chitwan National Park (RCNP) is an approximately 930 

 km' wildlife preserve centered at 27''30'N 84°20'E in the central 

 Terai lowlands of Nepal. It lies between the outer range of the 

 Himalayan Mountains (the Mahabharat Lekh) and the Nepalese-India 

 border. The park consists of the Rapti Valley at elevations of 150- 

 250 m and the Churia and Someswar Hills, collectively known as the 

 Siwaliks, that range to about 650 m elevation. The Siwaliks roughly 

 parallel the political border to the south. Maps of RCNP and 

 descriptions of the ecology of the area have been published in 

 Sunquist (1981) , Laurie (1982) , and Sunquist and Sunquist (1988) . 



The following keys to the known amphibians and reptiles of 

 RCNP derive from keys originally included in a report submitted to 

 the Nepalese Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation 

 in 1986. The report was designed for use by park visitors and staff 

 but was never published. Zug and Mitchell (1995) subsequently 

 described the herpetofauna, provided an annotated checklist, and 

 summarized natural history information available for the eleven 

 frogs and 44 reptiles known to occur in RCNP. The following keys 

 provide a means of identifying all the amphibians and reptiles of 

 the park, and supplement Zug and Mitchell (1995) . They are based on 

 species descriptions in Smith (1931, 1935, 1943), Daniel (1983), 

 Moll (1986a, 1986b) , and our observations on specimens available. 



