Branderhorst's snapping turtle (Elseya branderhorsti)

A neotype was recently defined for E. branderhorsti in order to clarify its taxonomic issues, and this neotype is now the name bearing type for the species. In their paper, Thomson and =colleagues went through the entire collection history, as best as is known, and restricted the type locality of the species to "southeastern Papua, Indonesia, between the Lorentz River and Merauke", and the neotype was obtained from this region. The neotype is lodged with the Papua New Guinea National Museum. This type has been identified as being the same species originally described by Ouwens in 1914. The closest relatives of E. branderhorsti are E. dentata and E. flaviventralis, both of northern Australia. These three species together comprise the subgenus Elseya.