Reptiles Magazine Levitonius mirus is endemic to Leyte and Samar Islands in the Southeast Asian nation. December 24, 2020 Jeff Weinell, a KU graduate research assistant at the Biodiversity Institute, is lead author of a paper describing Waray Dwarf Burrowing Snake as both a new genus and a new species, in the peer-reviewed journal Copeia. Photo by University of Kansas A subterranean snake that was collected in the Philippines in 2006 and 2007 was misidentified in the field and spent more than 10 years in the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum before it was properly described, via molecular analysis, as an entirely new species and genus of snake, the Waray dwarf burrowing snake (