Snake Skeletons

The precaudal vertebrae have a more or less high neural spine which, as a rare exception, may be expanded and plate-like above, and short or moderately long transverse processes to which the ribs are attached by a single facet. The centra of the anterior vertebrae emit more or less developed descending processes, or haemapophyses, which are sometimes continued throughout, as in Tropidonotus, Vipera, and Ancistrodon, among European genera.

In the caudal region, elongate transverse processes take the place of ribs, and the haemapophyses are paired, one on each side of the haemal canal. In the Rattlesnakes the seven or eight last vertebrae are enlarged and fused into one.

The typical Ophidian skull is characterized by a solidly ossified brain-case, with the distinct frontals and the united parietals extending downwards to the basisphenoid, which is large and produced forward into a rostrum extending to the ethmoidal region. The nasal region is less completely ossified, and the paired nasals are often attached only at their base. The occipital condyle is either trilobate and formed by the basioccipital and the exoccipitals, or a simple knob formed by the basioccipital; the supraoccipital is excluded from the foramen magnum. The basioccipital may bear a strong, curved ventral process or hypapophysis.

The vertebral column consists of an atlas without ribs; numerous precaudal vertebrae, all of which, except the first or first three, bear long, movable, curved ribs with a small posterior tubercle at the base, the last of these ribs sometimes forked; two to ten so-called lumbar vertebrae without ribs, but with bifurcate transverse processes enclosing the lymphatic vessels; and a number of ribless caudal vertebrae with simple transverse processes. When bifid, the ribs or transverse processes have the branches regularly superposed.

The centra have the usual cup-and-ball articulation, with the nearly hemispherical or transversely elliptic condyle at the back, whilst the neural arch is provided with additional articular surfaces in the form of pre- and post-zygapophyses, broad, flattened, and overlapping, and of a pair of anterior wedge-shaped processes called zygosphene, fitting into a pair of corresponding concavities, zygantrum, just below the base of the neural spine. Thus the vertebrae of snakes articulate with each other by eight joints in addition to the cup-and-ball on the centrum, and interlock by parts reciprocally receiving and entering one another, like the joints called “tenon-and-mortice” in carpentry.

The prefrontal bone is situated, on each side, between the frontal and the maxillary, and may or may not be in contact with the nasal. The postfrontal, usually present, borders the orbit behind, rarely also above, and in the Pythons a supraorbital is intercalated between it and the prefrontal. The premaxillary is single and small, and as a rule connected with the maxillary only by ligament. The paired vomer is narrow.

The palatine and pterygoid are elongate and parallel to the axis of the skull, the latter diverging behind and extending to the quadrate or to the articular extremity of the mandible; the pterygoid is connected with the maxillary by the ectopterygoid or transverse bone, which may be very elongate, and the maxillary often emits a process towards the palatine, the latter bone being usually produced inwards and upwards towards the anterior extremity of the basisphenoid. The quadrate is usually large and elongate, and attached to the cranium through the supratemporal. In rare cases the transverse bone is forked, and articulates with two branches of the maxilla.