Sharptail Snake Contia   Baird & Girard, 1853
An adult specimen from Sonoma County, California Image © Brock Dolman, 2010
Taxonomic Comments:
Theodora Pinou, Saverio Vicario, Monique Marschner and Adalgisa Caccone (2004. Relict snakes of North America and their relationships within Caenophidia, using likelihood-based Bayesian methods on mitochondrial sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 32: 563-574) placed the genus Contia within a single well-resolved (but unnamed) family-level clade. Feldman & Hoyer (2010. A new species of snake in the genus Contia (Squamata: Colubridae) from California and Oregon. Copeia 2010(2): 254-267), using genetic and morphological evidence, described a new species, Contia longicaudae, from California and Oregon.