Kinyongia carpenteri, commonly called Carpenter's chameleon or the helmeted chameleon, is a species of chameleon, a lizard in the family Chamaeleonidae. The species is native to central Africa.
Geographic range K. carpenteri has a geographic range limited to the mountain highlands on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Habitat The preferred natural habitat of K. carpenteri is forest, at altitudes of .
Reproduction K. carpenteri is oviparous.
Etymology The specific name, carpenteri, honors the type specimen's collector, British physician and entomologist Geoffrey Douglas Hale Carpenter.Beolens, Bo; Watkins, Michael; Grayson, Michael (2011). The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. xiii + 296 pp. . (Kinyongia carpenteri, p. 48).
Taxonomy Originally named in the genus Chamaeleo, the species C. carpenteri was moved into the genus Bradypodion prior to its current classification.Nečas P (1999). Chameleons—Nature's Hidden Jewels. Frankfurt am Main: Edition Chimaira. 348 pp. (Europe) (USA, Canada). With the move into the genus Kinyongia, the masculine ending to the specific epithets of other species in the genus needed to be modified to match the feminine generic name. -- see correction by Tolley et al. 2007.
References
Further reading Spawls S, Howell K, Hinkel H, Menegon M (2018). Field Guide to East African Reptiles, Second Edition. London: Bloomsbury Natural History. 624 pp. . (Kinyongia carpenteri, p. 267).