Serpentes

Michael Allen Smith from Seattle, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikidata/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
- snakePBDB
- Sits inside
- OphidiaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At least 165 million years on record.
The record covers at least 165.3 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 168.2 Mya to 0 Mya.
3,517 occurrences of Serpentes on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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
3,517 occurrences- Middle Jurassicunder 1%
- Late Jurassicunder 1%
- Early Cretaceousunder 1%
- Late Cretaceous5%
- Paleocene1%
- Eocene12%
- Oligocene5%
- Miocene32%
- Pliocene10%
- Pleistocene31%
- 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.
Found in
316 formations
- Ash Hollow Formation47
- Upper Freshwater Molasse Formation · Molasse Group45
- Kingsdown Formation44
- Valentine Formation · Ogallala Group40
- Rexroad Formation37
- Maevarano Formation29
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The named rock units Serpentes has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 292 further formations hold fewer occurrences each and are not listed. 2,067 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Serpentes and its relatives
MioceneWhere Serpentes and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
4,319 taxa- Rana47 sites
- Aves26 sites
- Colubridae26 sites
- Thamnophis24 sites
- Bufo23 sites
- Trionychidae22 sites
- Anura20 sites
- Equus20 sites
- Lepisosteus20 sites
- Boidae19 sites
- Ophisaurus19 sites
- Colubrinae17 sites
- Crocodylia17 sites
- Emydidae16 sites
- Geochelone16 sites
- Bovidae15 sites
- Mimomys14 sites
- Beremendia fissidens13 sites
- Erinaceus13 sites
- Soricidae13 sites
- Amphisbaenidae12 sites
- Anguidae12 sites
- Canis12 sites
- Elaphe12 sites
The Paleobiology Database records at least 663 sites for Serpentes, and this reads 240 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
796 references- Pleistocene Amphibians and Reptiles in Britain and Europe129
- A succession of Pliocene and Pleistocene snake faunas from the High Plains of the United States98
- Fossil snakes from Poland55
- Fossil snakes of North America44
- Late Cainozoic localities of snakes and lizards of Ukraine43
- Hemphillian (late Miocene) snakes from Nebraska, with comments on Arikareean through Blancan snakes of midcontinental North America41
- Les nouvelles faunes de vertebres anterieurs a la "Grande Coupure" decouvertes dans les phosphorites du Quercy37
- Fossil snake assemblages from the French Middle Miocene localities at La Grive (France)35
- The fossil snakes of Florida33
- Amphibians and Squamates from the Miocene of Felsőtárkány Basin, N-Hungary31
- Non-erycine Booidea from the Oligocene and Miocene of Europe28
- Herpetofaunas of the Big Springs and Hornet's Nest quarries (northeastern Nebraska, Pleistocene: Late Blancan)27
Each of the 3,517 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. 784 further references are not listed. 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 content1

Picture of Serpentes
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Michael Allen Smith from Seattle, USA
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Serpentes 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.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itOphidia through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Linnaeus 1758)