THE CENTER FOR NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY

Reptilia    Squamata (part)    Crotalidae  

Sidewinder
Crotalus cerastes Hallowell, 1854

SSAR 9th Edition Comments:
 There are no current SSAR comments for this taxon.

Range maps are based on curated specimens and provided gratis by CNAH.
(Created by Travis W. Taggart; Version: 2023.04.08.12.46.06)
Download GeoJSON polygon range file: - 1.36 MB

Province/State Distribution:
USA: Arizona California Nevada Utah

First instance(s) of published English names:
Horned Rattlesnake (Crotalus cerastes: Cooper, James G. 1869. The fauna of California and its geographical distribution. Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 4():61-81); Side-winder (Crotalus cerastes: Yarrow, Henry C. 1882. Check list of North American Reptilia and Batrachia with catalogue of specimens in U. S. National Museum. Bulletin of the United States National Museum (24):1-249); Sidewinder (Crotalus cerastes: Stejneger, Leonhard H. 1893. Annotated list of the reptiles and batrachians collected by the Death Valley Expedition in 1891, with descriptions of new species. North American Fauna 7():159–228); Sidewinder (Crotalus cerastes: Van Denburgh, John. 1897. The reptiles of the Pacific Coast and Great Basin: An account of the species known to inhabit California, and Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Nevada. Occasional Papers of the California Academy of Sciences 5():9-236); Sidewinder (Crotalus cerastes: Schmidt, Karl Peterson and D. D. Davis. 1941. Field Book of Snakes of the United States and Canada. C.P. Putnam and Sons, New York. 365pp.);

Taxon Links:

  
Catalog of American Amphibians and Reptiles
  
The Reptile Database
  
NatureServe
  
iNaturalist
  
GenBank
  
USGS - Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Database

Selected References:
1854 Hallowell, Edward. Descriptions of new reptiles from California. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 7:91–97
1940 Gloyd, Howard K. The rattlesnakes, genera Sistrurus and Crotalus. Chicago Academy of Sciences Special Publication 4(1):1-266
1956 Klauber, Laurence M. Rattlesnakes. Their habits, life histories, and influence on mankind. 2 Volumes. University of California Press, Berkeley, California. pp.
1972 Klauber, Laurence M. Rattlesnakes. Their Habits, Life Histories, and Influence on Mankind. 2 Vols. 2nd ed. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. pp.
1975 Stewart, Glenn R. and Ronald S. Daniel. Microornamentation of lizard scales: Some variations and taxonomic correlations. Herpetologica 31(1):117-130
2017 Bezy, Robert L., Philip C. Rosen, Thomas R. Van Devender, and Erik F. Enderson. Southern distributional limits of the Sonoran Desert herpetofauna along the mainland coast of northwestern Mexico Mesoamerican Herpetology 4(1):138-167
2024 Myers, Edward A., Rhett M. Rautsaw, Miguel Borja, Jason Jones, Christoph I. Grünwald, Matthew L. Holding, Felipe Grazziotin, and Christopher L. Parkinson. Phylogenomic discordance is driven by wide-spread introgression and incomplete lineage sorting during rapid species diversification within rattlesnakes (Viperidae: Crotalus and Sistrurus) Systematic Biology syae018:

THE CENTER FOR NORTH AMERICAN HERPETOLOGY — Accessed: Monday 19 May 2025 18:53 CT