Pythonoidea
The Pythonoidea, also known as pythonoid snakes, are a superfamily of snakes that contains pythons and other closely related python-like snakes. As of 2018, Pythonoidea contains 43 species, including the eponymous genus Python and 7 other genera of pythons, all in the family Pythonidae, as well as two lesser-known families, Loxocemidae and Xenopeltidae.
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 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.
