Backbones are a critical component of bioinspired snake robots, providing support and actuator attachment points. Current soft snake robots overwhelmingly rely on continuum backbones, which are continuous strips or rods. Continuum backbones are straightforward to manufacture, but tie together torsional and bending stiffness, buckling load and maximum curvature. For example, increasing cross-section size to raise buckling load increases torsional stiffness and bending stiffness in at least one plane. Biological snakes have highly articulated backbones that break these scalings, but they also have complex vertebra geometry and musculature. In this work, we develop a concept for a highly articulated, snake-inspired backbone and a corresponding actuator layout. The artificial vertebrae include key features identified in biology literature, such as articulation points and motion limiters. We measure range of motion in two planes, note emergent twist, and demonstrate locomotion. The results show feasibility of an alternative soft snake robot design, with closer mimicry of biology and significantly higher mechanical complexity. Emergent behaviors tying twist and bending deformation suggest a path forward for producing complex movements from simple actuation inputs, but further work is needed to model robot mechanics.