>>I wouldn't worry to much about that paper; there are newer papers with more data and better, more sophisticated analyses. Check out Slowinski and Lawson in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution (2001 or 2002?) and a more recent paper in Systematic Biology (2003 but can't remember the author).

The most recent papers on the subject are:

Slowinski, J. B. and R. Lawson. 2002. Snake phylogeny: evidence from nuclear and mitochondrial genes. Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 24:194-202.

Vidal, N. and S. B. Hedges. 2002. Higher-level relationships of caenophidian snakes inferred from four nuclear and mitochondrial genes. C. R. Biologies 325:987–995.

Vidal, N. & S.B. Hedges. 2002. Higher-level relationships of snakes inferred from four nuclear and mitochondrial genes. C.R. Biologies 325: 977-985.

Kelly, C. M. R., N. P. Barker and M. H. Villet. 2003. Phylogenetics of advanced snakes (Caenophidia) based on four mitochondrial genes. Syst. Biol., 52:439-459.

And before out trolling but ignorant friend starts to whine about ignoring older evidence, let me point out several of these papers incorporate the exact sequencees used by Heise et al., but come to different conclusions by virtue of different methods of analysis and the inclusion of more taxa (the position of Atractaspis is one of them).

Cheers,

Wolfgang
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