Uropeltoidea

Uropeltoidea
Uropeltis maculata.jpg
Uropeltis maculata (Uropeltidae)
Cyl ruffus 061212 2021 tdp.jpg
Cylindrophis rufus (Cylindrophiidae)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Squamata
Suborder: Serpentes
Infraorder: Alethinophidia
Superfamily: Uropeltoidea
J.P. Müller, 1832
Families

The Uropeltoidea, also known as uropeltoid snakes, are a superfamily of snakes that contains uropeltids (family Uropeltidae) and Asian pipesnakes (families Cylindrophiidae and Anomochilidae).

As of 2018, Uropeltoidea contains 71 species, including the eponymous shield-tail snakes (genus Uropeltis with 23 species) and their relatives (32 species in six other genera), 13 species of Asian pipesnakes (genus Cylindrophis), and three species of dwarf pipesnakes (genus Anomochilus).

The taxonomy of boas, pythons, and other henophidian snakes has been long debated, and ultimately the decision whether to assign a particular clade to a particular Linnaean rank (such as a superfamily, family, or subfamily) is arbitrary. The clade name Uropeltoidea emphasizes the relatively close evolutionary relationship among these 71 species, which last shared a common ancestor about 48 [CI:36–60] million years ago, in contrast to the more distant relationship between uropeltoids and their next closest relatives, the pythonoids (the most recent common ancestor between the uropeltoids and the pythonoids lived ~73 [CI:59–87] million years ago).



This page was last updated at 2023-02-23 11:47 UTC. Update now. View original page.

All our content comes from Wikipedia and under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.


Top

If mathematical, chemical, physical and other formulas are not displayed correctly on this page, please useFirefox or Safari