Aniliidae

DuSantos · CC BY 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
- pipe snakePBDB
- Sits inside
- AlethinophidiaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB
- Life habit
- fossorial, solitaryPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB
Time the record covers
At least 69 million years on record.
The record covers at least 83.6 Mya to 13.8 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 85.7 Mya to 11 Mya.
17 occurrences of Aniliidae on record, most of them in the Eocene. 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
17 occurrences- Late Cretaceous29%
- Paleocene6%
- Eocene35%
- Oligocene6%
- Miocene24%
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
8 formations
- Bridger Formation3
- La Victoria Formation · Honda Group3
- Allen Formation · Malargüe Group2
- Milk River Formation1
- Wadi Milk Formation1
- Santa Lucia Formation1
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The named rock units Aniliidae 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.
Aniliidae and its relatives
EoceneWhere Aniliidae and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
423 taxa- Anura3 sites
- Lacertilia3 sites
- Lepisosteidae3 sites
- Madtsoiidae3 sites
- Necrosaurus3 sites
- Placosaurus3 sites
- Saturninia3 sites
- Serpentes3 sites
- Anchilophus (Paranchilophus) jeanteti2 sites
- Anguidae2 sites
- Archaeonycteris2 sites
- Australophis anilioides2 sites
- Blanus2 sites
- Calyptocephalellidae2 sites
- Catodontherium2 sites
- Cebochoerus robiacensis2 sites
- Chasmotherium depereti2 sites
- Dinosauria2 sites
- Dromaeosauridae2 sites
- Enigmatosaurus2 sites
- Erycinae2 sites
- Eurohippus parvulus2 sites
- Glamys robiacensis2 sites
- Hipposideridae2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 15 sites for Aniliidae, 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
11 references- Limbless Tetrapods4
- A South American snake lineage from the Eocene Greenhouse of North America and a reappraisal of the fossil record of “anilioid” snakes2
- An anilioid snake from the Upper Cretaceous of northern Patagonia2
- Les gisements de Robiac (Eocène supérieur) et leurs faunes de Mammifères2
- Anuran Lissamphibian and Squamate Reptiles from the Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) Deccan Intertrappean Sites in Central India, with a Review of Lissamphibian and Squamate Diversity in the Northward Drifting Indian Plate1
- A new dwarf boa (Serpentes, Booidea, 'Tropidophiidae') from the Early Oligocene of Belgium: a case of the isolation of Western European snake faunas1
- A dinosaur fauna from the Late Cretaceous (Cenomanian) of northern Sudan1
- Squamate reptiles from the early Paleocene of the Tiupampa area (Santa Lucía Formation), Bolivia.1
- Zur Stellung der Wirbeltierfauna des Geiseltals, insbesondere der Mammalier, im europäischen Mitteleozän (Position of the European Middle Eocene vertebrate fauna of the Geisel Valley, with special focus on mammals)1
- Fossil snakes from the Upper Milk River Formation (Upper Cretaceous), Alberta1
- Amphibians and Reptiles (in: The Geology and Paleontology of the Elk Mountain and Tabernacle Butte area, Wyoming)1
Each of the 17 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 content1

Picture of Aniliidae
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- DuSantos
- Licence
- CC BY 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Aniliidae 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 itAlethinophidia through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Fitzinger 1826