Feb 13, 2010: Dem Bones

[xoxoxoBruce]

Snakes are the ultimate in flexibility, all wiggly and squirmy, like a big worm.
It's easy to forget they actually have a skeleton... bones, lots of bones.



Phenomenica has a lot of pictures of snake skeletons. The text goes something like;

The precaudal vertebrae have a more or less high neural spine which, as a rare exception (Xenopholis), 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 (Fig. II, A), as in Tropidonotus, Vipera, and Ancistrodon, among European genera.

but the pictures are very cool.

via