Epicrates
Epicrates is a genus of non-venomous snakes in the subfamily Boinae of the family Boidae. The genus is native to South America and Central America. Five species are currently recognized as being valid, including the rainbow boa.

Uncredited · 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
- rainbow boaPBDB
- Sits inside
- BoinaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Boinae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Boinae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Boinae
Time the record covers
At least 7.1 million years on record.
The record covers at least 7.246 Mya to 129 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 11.63 Mya to 0 Mya.
5 occurrences of Epicrates 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
5 occurrences- Miocene20%
- Pleistocene78%
- Holocene2%
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 Epicrates has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Epicrates and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Epicrates and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
219 taxa- Athene cunicularia3 sites
- Falco sparverius3 sites
- Anolis sagrei2 sites
- Anura2 sites
- Chelonoidis2 sites
- Cubophis vudii2 sites
- Eptesicus fuscus2 sites
- Gallinago2 sites
- Glyptodon clavipes2 sites
- Nyctanassa violacea2 sites
- Patagioenas leucocephala2 sites
- Psittacus leucocephalus2 sites
- Serpentes2 sites
- Smilodon populator2 sites
- Sturnella magna2 sites
- Testudines2 sites
- Trochilidae2 sites
- Typhlops2 sites
- Tyto alba2 sites
- Zenaida aurita2 sites
- Accipiter1 site
- Accipiter striatus velox1 site
- Accipitridae1 site
- Acresuchus pachytemporalis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 5 sites for Epicrates, 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
5 references- Extant squamates in the Pleistocene of northwestern Argentina1
- Fossil snakes (Squamata, Serpentes) from the tar pits of Venezuela: taxonomic, palaeoenvironmental, and palaeobiogeographical implications for the North of South America during the Cenozoic/Quaternary boundary1
- New snake remains from the Miocene of northern South America1
- Exceptionally well preserved late Quaternary plant and vertebrate fossils from a blue hole on Abaco, The Bahamas1
- Fossil Amphibians and Reptiles from New Providence Island, Bahamas1
Each of the 5 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 Epicrates
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Epicrates cenchria · na
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
- 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 itBoinae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Wagler 1830