Protobothrops
Protobothrops is a genus of pit vipers found in Asia. It is also known as the lance headed pit vipers.

TimVickers · Public Domain · 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 2.8 million years on record.
The record covers at least 3.6 Mya to 774 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 5.333 Mya to 129 ka.
4 occurrences of Protobothrops on record, most of them in the Pliocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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- Pliocene50%
- Pleistocene50%
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
2 formations
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The named rock units Protobothrops has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 2 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Protobothrops and its relatives
PlioceneWhere Protobothrops and its relatives were recorded in the Pliocene.
Found in the same rock
29 taxa- Colubridae2 sites
- Cyclophiops2 sites
- Lycodon2 sites
- Alethinophidia1 site
- Atrobucca1 site
- Bandicota indica1 site
- Benthosema pterotum1 site
- Cynoglossus sp.1 site
- Dinodon1 site
- Duttaphrynus melanostictus1 site
- Elaphe1 site
- Gadomus1 site
- Hoplobrotula1 site
- Hystrix1 site
- Ichthyscopus1 site
- Malakichthys1 site
- Neobythites1 site
- Nibea1 site
- Parabathymyrus sp.1 site
- Pennahia1 site
- Ptyas cf. mucosa1 site
- Ptyas mucosa1 site
- Rhabdophis1 site
- Rhabdophis tigrinus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Protobothrops, 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
3 references- Early Pliocene fossil snakes (Squamata, Colubroidea) with various teeth from the fissure deposit in Queshan, Henan, China2
- First fossil frog and snake assemblage from southern Taiwan: a window into Pleistocene herpetofauna and palaeoenvironments in subtropical East Asia1
- Early Pleistocene Fossil Snakes (Reptilia: Squamata) from Okinawajima Island in the Ryukyu Archipelago, Southwestern Japan1
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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Protobothrops
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- TimVickers
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Protobothrops was found in Sketchfab.
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
- 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 Romano-Hoge 1983