Largest Snake as Long as Bus
The discovery of fossilized remains belonging to the world’s largest snake has been reported in Nature journal.
Titan boa was 13 meters long--about the length of a bus--and lived in the rainforest of northeast Colombia 58-60 million years ago, BBC said.
The snake was so wide it would have reached up to a person’s hips, said researchers, who have estimated that it weighed more than a ton.
Green anacondas--the world’s heaviest snakes--reach a mere 250 kg.
Reticulated pythons--the world’s longest snakes--can reach up to 10 meters.
The team of researchers led by Jason Head, from the University of Toronto at Mississauga, Canada, used a known mathematical relationship between the size of vertebrae and the length of the body in living snakes to estimate the size of the ancient animal.
Named Titan boa cerrejonensis by its discoverers, the beast’s 13-meters-long body and 1,140 kg weight make it the largest snake on record.
Researchers discovered fossilized bones belonging to the super-sized slitherers and their possible prey at Cerrejon, one of the world’s largest open-pit coal mines.
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