Gloydius
Gloydius is a genus of pit vipers endemic to Asia, also known as Asian moccasins or Asian ground pit vipers. Named after American herpetologist Howard K. Gloyd, this genus is very similar to the North American genus Agkistrodon. 24 species are currently recognized.

Ks at Japanese Wikipedia / http://www.aikis.or.jp/~keisotyo/ · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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- Sits inside
- CrotalidaePBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At least 1 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 2.58 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 11.7 ka.
7 occurrences of Gloydius on record, most of them in the Pliocene. 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
7 occurrences- Pliocene71%
- Pleistocene29%
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.
Gloydius and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Gloydius and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
3 taxa- Elaphe2 sites
- Lycodon2 sites
- Rhabdophis tigrinus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Gloydius, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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- Early Pliocene fossil snakes (Squamata, Colubroidea) with various teeth from the fissure deposit in Queshan, Henan, China5
- Pleistocene fossil snakes (Squamata, Reptilia) from Shanyangzhai Cave, Hebei, China2
Each of the 7 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Gloydius
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ks at Japanese Wikipedia / http://www.aikis.or.jp/~keisotyo/
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Licence
- CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
- Commercial use
- the licence does not allow it
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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, “Gloydius”
- 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 itCrotalidae through timeFormations of the PlioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Hoge and Hoge 1981