A former taxonomic order of snakes (now typically classified within Squamata), referring to snakes with colubriform or colubrid-like characteristics.
From 'colubriform' (snake-shaped) + '-es' (Latin plural suffix used in taxonomy). This represents an older classification system in herpetology that has been updated with modern phylogenetics.
Animal taxonomy keeps changing as scientists learn more—'Colubriformes' used to be a major grouping, but modern DNA analysis showed the relationships were different, so they reorganized everything, proving that science is constantly self-correcting.
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