MARQUES ET AL.: AMPHIBIANS AND TERRESTRIAL REPTILES OF ANGOLA 
23 
Figure 16. Angolan Mopane Woodlands in southern Cunene Province and adjacent Namibia (Photo by Aaron M. 
Bauer). 
southeast of the eountry in Cuando Cubango Provinee; the southwestern eoastline, from south of 
Benguela to the border of Namibia is dominated by Kaokoveld desert (Fig. 14), replaeed inland by 
Namibian Savanna Woodlands (Fig. 15), whereas some of the southern areas of Huila and Cunene 
support Angolan Mopane Woodlands (Fig. 16). 
History of Herpetological Research in Angola 
The history of Angolan herpetology, as well the history of other zoologieal diseiplines in 
Angola, is almost as unexplored as the eountry’s biodiversity. Crawford-Cabral and Mesquitela 
(1989) first attempted to summarize the main expeditions and works relating to Angolan verte¬ 
brates, presenting maps for eolleeting loealities of the most important of these. Given the histori- 
eal nature of most bibliographie reeords, it is important to review in more detail the history of 
herpetology in Angola in order to better understand the development of our eurrent knowledge on 
the diversity and distribution of amphibians and reptiles in the eountry. While the “birth” of 
Angolan herpetology as a diseipline was only in the 1860s, the preeedents for the seientifie study 
of Angolan herpetofauna extend as far baek as the seeond half of the seventeenth eentury. One of 
the first written aeeounts on Angolan biodiversity is that of Antonio de Oliveira de Cardonega 
(1623-1690), a Portuguese military offieer who lived in Angola from 1639 to 1690 and wrote the 
manuseript Histdria geral das guerras Angolanas (General history of the Angolan wars) in 1680; 
the manuseript was only published as a faesimile edition in 1940 (see Cardonega 1940-1942). This 
manuseript provides some notes on the fauna of the eountry and provides eomments on snakes, 
eroeodiles (Fig. 17), and lizards. Another seventeenth eentury author that deseribed different types 
of snakes and lizards from Angola was the Italian Capuehin Missionary Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi 
