Saturday, April 14, 2012

50 FOOT SNAKE!?


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Can you imagine a 50 foot snake, weighing more than a ton, roaming around this earth? Seems like something that could just be out of a horror movie...like Anaconda times a million right? Wrong! The discovery of a new skull fossil demonstrated that this kind of creature existed approximately 58 million years ago! He was real! The biggest snakes today do not even compare to the size of this reptile. The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute found the fossils of this creature in a Cerejon coal mine in northern Colombia. They just recently found this snake skull fossil, however, the place has served as discovery grounds for some of what would have been “the world’s greatest reptiles.” They think that portion of South America might have been a tropical rainforest back in the day. The authors predict that this creature, known as Titanoboa, was the largest predator on the planet for at least 10 million years! It probably dominated after the dinosaur extinction. 

Its amazing that they found this skull! Usually snake skulls don’t fossilize well, as their skulls are made out of connective tissue which degenerates. Titanoboa, however, was so large that the ossified bony elements of its skull were able to fossilize. Through studying skull morphology, the scientsits determined that this snake was not venomous, but instead was a constrictor. It could have had the sheer strength of constricting its prey with a force of 400 lbs/square inch. Consequently, scientists predict that this snake was a distant relative of the anaconda and boa constrictor. Since snakes are ectotherms and rely on their environment to support their metabolic needs, its thought that this huge snake could exist 58 million years ago because the temperatures were very warm. Such warm temperatures could provide reptiles with an optimal environment, enabling them to grow much larger than they are today. The news article made some interesting implications about the future. With a consistent raise in temperature in the last few decades, some scientists believe that, with time, Titanoboa and other large reptiles may make a return. That would be SCARY! Talk about Judgement Day...that would be a nice trick to play, God ;) 

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NEWS ARTICLE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17544885 

3 comments:

Allison Welch said...

Amazing! What might a snake this large have eaten?

Anonymous said...

Did they find any other fossilized remains of either the snake or other reptiles living in the area? It might have been a good indicator as to what type of environment the snake lived in, and why it was beneficial to be so freaking huge!!!! Even though you state that they believe the snake predominated the dinosaurs, I imagine him snacking on pterodactyls!!!

Laura said...

I went to DC for the Cherry Blossom festival last weekend, and got to see the Titanoboa exhibit at NMNH. They had a cast of a vertebra (presumably because they were busy studying the real one) to compare against an anaconda vertebra, and a big life-sized model of Titanoboa eating some kind of crocodilian, and the a couple of TVs showing pieces from the documentary they're airing. It was pretty cool, although the whole exhibit was surprisingly small considering what an exciting find this is. Hopefully they'll expand it in the future with actual fossils.