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Pythonoidea
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Order:	Squamata
Suborder:	Serpentes
Infraorder:	Alethinophidia
Superfamily:	Pythonoidea
Families
Pythonidae Loxocemidae Xenopeltidae

The Pythonoidea, also known as pythonoid snakes, are a superfamily of snakes that contains pythons (family Pythonidae) and other closely related python-like snakes (but not boas, which are in a separate superfamily called Booidea). As of 2022, Pythonoidea contains 39 species, including the eponymous genus Python and 10 other genera of pythons (Antaresia, Apodora, Aspidites, Bothrochilus, Leiopython, Liasis, Malayopython, Morelia, Nyctophilopthon and Simalia), all in the family Pythonidae, as well as two lesser-known families, Loxocemidae (one species, the Mexican burrowing python, in the genus Loxocemus) and Xenopeltidae (three species of sunbeam snakes in the genus Xenopeltis).

The taxonomy of pythons, boas, and other henophidian snakes has long been debated, and ultimately the decision whether to assign a particular clade to a particular Linnaean rank (such as a superfamily, family, or subfamily) is arbitrary. The clade name Pythonoidea emphasizes the relatively close evolutionary relationship among these 43 species, which last shared a common ancestor about 62 million years ago, in contrast to the more distant relationship between pythonoids and their next closest relatives, uropeltoids (the most recent common ancestor between pythonoids and uropeltoids lived ~73 million years ago).

References

1. Reynolds, RG; Niemiller, ML; Revell, LJ (2014). "Toward a Tree-of-Life for the boas and pythons: multilocus species-level phylogeny with unprecedented taxon sampling" (PDF). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 71: 201–213. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2013.11.011. PMID 24315866. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-12-02. Retrieved 2018-05-13.
2. Hedges, SB; Marin, J; Suleski, M; Paymer, M; Kumar, S (2015). "Tree of Life Reveals Clock-Like Speciation and Diversification". Mol Biol Evol. 32 (4): 835–845. doi:10.1093/molbev/msv037. PMC 4379413. PMID 25739733.

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