Typhlopoidea Gray, 1825

General information.

This superfamily represents the sister group to leptotyphlopids and comprises Typhlopidae, Xenotyphlopidae, and Gerrhopilidae (Vidal et al. 2010; Pyron and Wallach 2014; Miralles et al. 2018). They were once all lumped together in an expanded Typhlopidae, however, recent molecular but also anatomical evidence attests for the distinction in different families (e.g., Vidal et al. 2010; Kornilios et al. 2013; Pyron and Wallach 2014; Zheng and Wiens 2016; Chretien et al. 2019; Lira and Martins 2021). Nevertheless, as with all scolecophidians, vertebral morphology of typhlopoids is relatively uniform.