Morelia spilota

Morelia spilota, commonly known as the carpet python, is a large snake of the family Pythonidae found in Australia, New Guinea, Bismarck Archipelago, and the northern Solomon Islands. Many subspecies are recognised; ITIS lists six, the Reptile Database six, and the IUCN eight.

Morelia spilota

Uncredited · 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
Also called
carpet pythonPBDB
Sits inside
MoreliaPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Pythonidae
Life habit
ground dwellingPBDB, for Pythonidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Pythonidae

Time the record covers

At least 11 million years on record.

The record covers at least 11.63 Mya to 11.7 ka. No occurrence read is dated outside 15.98 Mya to 0 Mya.

Miocene — about 1 of 2 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 2 occurrencesPleistocene — about 0 of 2 occurrences16–16 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences16–15 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences15–15 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences15–14 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences14–14 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences14–13 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences13–13 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences13–12 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences12–12 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences549 ka–0 Mya — about 1 occurrence11.63 Mya11.7 ka16.5 Mya0 Mya

2 occurrences of Morelia spilota 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

2 occurrences

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.

Morelia spilota and its relatives

Miocene

Where Morelia spilota and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

43 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Morelia spilota, 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

Each of the 2 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 Morelia spilota

Credit
nobody named on the record
Licence
not stated by the source
Commercial use
cannot be read from the licence given — check the record

No 3D scan of Morelia spilota was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.

MorphoSource 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 itMorelia through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Lacépède 1804)