Charina bottae
The rubber boa is a species of snake in the family Boidae and is native to western North America. It is sometimes known as the coastal rubber boa or the northern rubber boa and is not to be confused with the southern rubber boa.

andrewnydam · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- northern rubber boaPBDB
- Sits inside
- CharinaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Erycinae
- Life habit
- fossorial, solitaryPBDB, for Erycinae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Erycinae
Time the record covers
At least 1.2 million years on record.
The record covers at least 1.4 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 4.7 Mya to 11.7 ka.
4 occurrences of Charina bottae on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
4 occurrences- Pliocene16%
- Pleistocene84%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
1 formation
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The named rock units Charina bottae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Charina bottae and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Charina bottae and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
62 taxa- Odocoileus2 sites
- Thomomys2 sites
- Alilepus vagus1 site
- Alilepus wilsoni1 site
- Aplodontia1 site
- Bassariscus casei1 site
- Borophagus diversidens1 site
- Buisnictis breviramus1 site
- Camelops1 site
- Canis1 site
- Canis lepophagus1 site
- Capromeryx tauntonensis1 site
- Castor californicus1 site
- Colubridae1 site
- Crotalus1 site
- Dinofelis palaeoonca1 site
- Elaphe pliocenica1 site
- Elaphe vulpina1 site
- Equus1 site
- Euceratherium1 site
- Felidae1 site
- Gymnogyps1 site
- Hemiauchenia macrocephala1 site
- Hypolagus edensis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Charina bottae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
2 references- Charina Gray, 1849 (Boidae: Erycinae) from the Pleistocene of California3
- Snakes of the Pliocene Taunton local fauna of Adams County, Washington with the description of a new colubrid1
Each of the 4 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Charina bottae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- andrewnydam
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- In Copyright
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Charina bottae · UMMZ:Herps:240637
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Rubber boa”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCharina through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Blainville 1835)