Remember, scale rows comes after structure. Like vertebrae count and structure, rib count, lung structure, organ structure. Boas and pythons, paired lungs, organs, pelvic hind girdle, etc. To colubrids, one functional lung, lineal organs. No hind girdle, etc.

With morphology, you can pick up a snake, Do the work, and know what it is. Color and pattern are the least important. But also used when applicable.

Molecular taxo is another ball of wax. Its exacting and measurable, only not by someone in the field. Its also very unstable at this time. Its my understanding that with dna, there is no universal gene that works for all species. Or at least, folks are not using one. The key to understanding this is, reptile parts evolve at different rates. Some solid and slow to change. like vital organs, skeletal structure etc. Others can evolve faster, like scale counts etc. And yet, some evolve very quickly like color and pattern. Also color and pattern has a degree of randomness to it. That is, if you clone a snake, it will still produce a range of colors and patterns. Remember this is a very simple example. In reality, there are millions of genes to work with, so being unstable is easy.

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