Pseudonaja nuchalis
Pseudonaja nuchalis, the northern brown snake or gwardar, is a species of very fast, highly venomous elapid snake native to Australia. Its colour and pattern are rather variable, depending largely on its location.

Andy · CC BY-SA 2.0 · 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
- PseudonajaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
3 occurrences of Pseudonaja nuchalis 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
3 occurrences- Pleistocene97%
- Holocene3%
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.
Pseudonaja nuchalis and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Pseudonaja nuchalis and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
94 taxa- Antechinus flavipes3 sites
- Cercartetus nanus3 sites
- Dasyurus viverrinus3 sites
- Egernia3 sites
- Macropus (Macropus) fuliginosus3 sites
- Notechis3 sites
- Perameles gunnii3 sites
- Petaurus breviceps3 sites
- Potorous platyops3 sites
- Procoptodon gilli3 sites
- Pseudechis porphyriacus3 sites
- Pseudocheirus peregrinus3 sites
- Simosthenurus occidentalis3 sites
- Sminthopsis crassicaudata3 sites
- Sminthopsis murina3 sites
- Tiliqua3 sites
- Varanus varius3 sites
- Agamidae2 sites
- Amphibia2 sites
- Artamidae2 sites
- Bettongia2 sites
- Bettongia lesueur2 sites
- Cercartetus lepidus2 sites
- Conilurus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Pseudonaja nuchalis, 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- Pleistocene fossil vertebrate sites of the South East region of South Australia2
- Small fossil vertebrates from Victoria Cave, Naracoorte, South Australia. IV. Reptiles1
Each of the 3 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 the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Pseudonaja nuchalis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Andy
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- 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
- Pseudonaja nuchalis · YPM:VZ:YPM HERR 012875
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 itPseudonaja through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Günther 1858