Inland taipan ago. The inland taipan would have been known to Aboriginal Australians 40,000-60,000 years ago and is well known to them today. To the aboriginal people from the place now called Goyder Lagoon in north-east South Australia, the inland taipan was called "Dandarabilla". The inland taipan first came to the attention of Western science in 1879. Two specimens of the fierce snake were discovered in the junction of the Murray and Darling Rivers in northwestern Victoria and described by Frederick McCoy, who called the species "Diemenia microlepidota", or small-scaled brown snake. In 1882 a third specimen was found near Bourke, New
Coastal taipan is exceeded in length among venomous snakes only by the Asiatic king cobra, African black mamba, and genus "Lachesis" (bushmasters) of the American neotropics. The head of the coastal taipan is long and narrow like that of the African black mamba ("Dendroaspis polylepis"), but without the "coffin" shape. The two species are strongly convergent in several aspects of morphology, ecology and behaviour. "O. scutellatus" has an angular brow and is lighter-coloured on the face. The body is slender and colouration can vary. It is often uniformly light olive or reddish-brown in colour, but some specimens may be dark gray to