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A summary is presented of classification of extant snakes down to the tribe level, based primarily upon and extrapolated from McDowell's higher-category taxa, but incorporating other recent innovations as well. Dates and authorities are provided for each taxon in all categories. The system incorporates 2 infraorders of Serpentes, one with 3 families, the other with 6 superfamilies and 12 families. Six of the latter families contain subfamilies, with 2 each in 5 and 28 in the other, for a total of 38 subfamilies. Among the proteroglyphs, 17 tribes are recognized in the 2 families and 4 subfamilies, and in the solenoglyphs 4 tribes are listed for the 2 subfamilies of one family. For many years snake classification has been reasonably stable, largely because relatively little was known of the internal characters so vital to a proper arrangement in which all taxa of equal rank are of approximately equal distinctiveness. Romer (1956) began to shake the established pattern on the basis of osteology and, it must be confessed, of the preliminary researches of perhaps the most influential of all modern students of snake classification, Samuel B. McDowell, although at that time nothing had been published by the latter. In due time McDowell arrived at definitive conclusions, some incorporated in the articles here listed (1968, 1974, 1975, In Prep.), and they differ extensively from Romer's preliminary assay. Underwood (1967) also shook the tree, but so vigorously as to virtually uproot it, at least in its colubroid section, so that no longer can this section be regarded as firmly reestablished; it sorely needs the soundly thorough examination of a McDowell. Hoffstetter and his co-workers have been a source of both stabilization and conservative innovation in snake classification for over 35 years (e.g. Hoffstetter, 1962; Hoffstetter and Rage, 1972). As Dowling (1975a:168) pointed out, suprafamilial subdivisions of snakes were disregarded in the present century (although utilized by earlier workers) until independently recognized by Hoffstetter (1946) and Smith and Warner (1948). It remained for Romer (1956) to popularize them, and for McDowell (1974, 1975, In Prep.) to demonstrate that both infraordinal and superfamilial categories are needed properly to express the interrelationships of |
