The southern limit of Omanosaura lizards (Squamata: Lacertidae)

poorly known species, O. jayakari (Boulenger, 1887) and O. cyanura (Arnold, 1972), endemic to the Hajar Mountains, from the Musandam Peninsula to Eastern Oman (see Sindaco & Jeremcenko, 2008). Both species have been only rarely quoted in the literature (Arnold, 1972, 1986; Arnold and Gallagher, 1977; Bischoff and Schmidtler, 1981; Geissler, 1998; Leptien and Bohme, 1994; Meinig, 1998). The southernmost published locality for both species is the Jebel Akhdar (Leptien and Bohme, 1994; van der Kooij, 2001). Gardner (2009) recently published a distributional map without any locality identification; in this map a locality in Eastern Hajar (approximately in the Jabal Abyad or Jabal Aswad) is reported for both O. jayakari and O. cyanura. During a brief survey, in November 2010, four specimens of Omanosaura cyanura and two specimens of O. jayakari were observed on the top of the escarpment East-South-East of Al Jaylah village, between Tiwi and Ash Shariq (or Ismaiyah), in the Jabal Bani Jabir, at an altitude of 1770 meters (N22.77 E59.06). Specimens of O. cyanura (Fig. 1) were found active between 12:00 and 14:00, among rock crevices in the higher part of a cliff. An adult specimen of O. jayakari was observed active on the rocky ground, before escaping in a deep crevice, while a young was observed active at the base of the cliff. The same day we observed four Omanosaura jayakari (Fig. 2) in a second place of the Jabal Bani Jabir, a small rocky valley near Al Hajar ash Shargi village (about N22.84 E59.14), at 1365 m. The first individual was active between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m.. Additionally, two adults and a juvenile were active on rocks on the edge of small cliffs, close to a small stream. These new records (Fig. 3) extend the known range of the two species of about 60 kilometers SE of the locality mapped by Gardner (2009). Herpetology Notes, volume 4: 171-172 (2011) (published online on 6 May 2011)