A Snake the Size of a Bus
EmailHave a phobia about snakes? Then be grateful you lived 60 million years later than Titanoboa cerrejonensis. It was at least 42 feet long. It probably weighed more than 2,500 pounds. It was big enough to eat a cow, as more than one headline writer enthuses, though it probably snacked on early crocodiles. The fossil was found in Colombia by a team headed by Jason Head of the University of Toronto, and is probably related to the modern-day Anaconda. But Anacondas — like the six-foot Python in Head’s photograph below — were pipsqueaks compared to Titanoboa. The pentagonal rock in the picture is one of the fossilized vertebrae of the ancient snake. Do a little eyeballing (Head’s team was more precise than this), and you’ll figure that the ancient snake was about six times larger than the Python slithering by in the photo. Nature, which published Head’s paper on the discovery, has a version of the story HERE. You can also find various news outlets having fun with the find — look at Canada.com or USA Today. Hate to inject a note of seriousness into what was turning out to be a great monster-snake story, but Titanoboa does tell us something about the climate of the Paleocene epoch (several million years after the last dinosaurs), and it goes against what’s been believed up until now. It suggests either that the tropics back then were a lot warmer than scientists thought, or they need to revise their beliefs about how temperature affects animals’ size. It’s been believed that cold-blooded animals are limited in size by the temperature around them (that’s why you find big, gross bugs closer to the equator). For Titanoboa to have grown to 40 feet, if it was anything like modern snakes, the average temperature around it — not the daytime high — would have had to be around 90 degrees Fahrenheit. At any rate, if you see anything like this behemoth in your neighborhood, please call a paleontologist. After you call the police. (Image courtesy Jason Head/University of Toronto.)
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Wow, that is a pretty big snake.
Posted by: Huh | February 4, 2009, 4:29 pm 4:29 pm
I know a few fellow veterans that served in S.E. Asia that daw living snakes this large and larger(length wise) and up to about 2 feet in diameter at the broadest point. Science only recognizes measured specimens. Try to get a scientist (or any one else for that matter) to measure or even photograph one of these jungle monsters.
Posted by: Quietman | February 4, 2009, 5:39 pm 5:39 pm
daw s/b saw
Posted by: Quietman | February 4, 2009, 5:39 pm 5:39 pm
Gives a whole new meanning to Snake in the grass!
Posted by: Georgie | February 4, 2009, 6:42 pm 6:42 pm
That isn’t an anaconda in the photo, it’s a ball python. They grow to be up to 3-5ft in length.
Posted by: John | February 4, 2009, 8:05 pm 8:05 pm
I stand corrected. You’re referring to the anaconda skull laying in front of the super-snake’s. The way the article is written is a bit misleading.
Posted by: John again | February 4, 2009, 8:09 pm 8:09 pm
I’ve seen one of these snakes before. My ex boyfriend.
Posted by: Miss Scorpio | February 4, 2009, 11:51 pm 11:51 pm
Scary part is this species could have been much bigger after all all we know is what the fossils we find tell us.
Posted by: Nathan | February 5, 2009, 2:05 am 2:05 am
FAKE!!!
Posted by: Joey | February 5, 2009, 8:11 am 8:11 am
Ned, you think they’ll have these at pet stores anytime soon? I want one. Noisy dog next door? Snake food. Neighbor who won’t mow his grass? Snake food.
On a serious side, Quietman, I believe you. The vast jungles of both S.E. Asia and the Amazon have been largely unexplored. There could be countless creatures still in existance that we know nothing of, or thought of as extinct. Who knows, one of those monsters you described could be our big snake pictured here.(the fossil, not the small python)
Posted by: Lawrence | February 5, 2009, 8:49 am 8:49 am
I hope it wasn’t the one that tricked Eve. Oh wait, that was only 4,000 years ago.
Posted by: xtian | February 5, 2009, 10:49 am 10:49 am
hahahahahahahahahahahaahahHAHAHAHAHAhlol LMFAO A GIANT SNAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: ROSS | February 5, 2009, 11:14 am 11:14 am
It lived 60 million years ago?!?!? How can that be? According to ID ‘theorists’ the Earth is no where near that old. Obviously God put these fossils in the ground and made them appear to be 60 million years old, when in fact they are only about 6,000 years old. Leave it to the liberal media to report bogus research from liberal scientists!
Posted by: Jim | February 5, 2009, 11:44 am 11:44 am
Jim, scientists believe the Earth to be about 4.5 billion years old. Dinosaurs showed up about 245 million years ago. So a 60 million year-old snake is quite plausible. :)
Posted by: K-Chan | February 5, 2009, 1:32 pm 1:32 pm
Jim,
Right you are! ID proponents do indeed believe that the world is less than 6,000 years old. Some of them simply state that the way scientists date fossils is wrong, while the more aggressive insist God put these things into the earth, and gave them million-years-old attributes as a test of Man’s faith.
Personally, I think the world is only about 62 years old: it didn’t exist before I was created and will cease to exist when (if) I depart. All of the rest of you were simply created for my amusement, and the world simply as a huge sandbox for me to play in.
(Hey, it’s no sillier theology than the bilge that serves as “logic” for the ID crowd!)
Posted by: Walker Evans | February 5, 2009, 1:47 pm 1:47 pm
xtian
Yes you must be right, after all the one that tricked eve could speak. I don’t think that 60 million year old snakes could talk yet. :)
Posted by: Quietman | February 5, 2009, 2:52 pm 2:52 pm
K-chan . . . I was kidding. I am with you.
Posted by: Jim | February 5, 2009, 3:11 pm 3:11 pm
Now how would you like to find that in your back yard now days eeeeeekkkkkk. I love snakes. So how many millions of years will go by now before our critters change again in size say like the horse,snake or dog Hmmmm?
Posted by: Beadazzle | February 5, 2009, 7:10 pm 7:10 pm
“It suggests either that the tropics back then were a lot warmer than scientists thought …” — this discovery also supports the theory of “periodic bouts of natural global warming” — in other words, global warming is natural and there ain’t that much we can do about it. Of course we should take good care of the Earth, but maybe we shouldn’t be so obsessive about it.
Posted by: Just looking | February 5, 2009, 7:16 pm 7:16 pm
any snakes gives me the greeps..dont forget ,according to the bible,they are curst. and forever will they crawl on their belly.
Posted by: simplecake | February 5, 2009, 9:34 pm 9:34 pm
this is crazy!
Posted by: kevin | February 6, 2009, 1:18 am 1:18 am
Simple, they are not cursed. They dont even crawl. That would imply they have working legs, and we all know that they don’t. Exept for some pythons with vestigal legs, used for mating. They evolved to fill a niche in the world ecosystem. They do it rather well I might add.
Posted by: Lawrence | February 6, 2009, 8:37 am 8:37 am
Just looking: similarly, death is natural (people die of natural causes all the time), so you don’t need to worry if someone ever points a gun at your head.
At least, that’s what your logic would seem to dictate.
Posted by: Ben | February 6, 2009, 10:59 am 10:59 am
Ned,
If I find one of these in my back yard I’m calling the Marines, not the police!
Posted by: Bob | February 6, 2009, 11:59 am 11:59 am
simplecake
did you mean crust or cursed?
Posted by: Quietman | February 6, 2009, 3:35 pm 3:35 pm
Just looking
“It suggests either that the tropics back then were a lot warmer than scientists thought …”
No, only AGW alarmists it would seem. The rest of us already knew that.
Posted by: Quietman | February 6, 2009, 3:38 pm 3:38 pm
So the average temp around the snake was 90 degree’s, much warmer than today. Yet we are on the verge of complete devestation from global warming? oh and how much carbon dioxide were these snakes or other animals of the day putting into the atmosphere. Just curious since Gore says the Science behind global warming is settled.
Posted by: OneMoreTime | February 6, 2009, 5:14 pm 5:14 pm
Well, this is way misleading. A 42 foot snake isn’t even that long. The record is around 33 feet; an extra 10 feet isn’t all that much on a snake in my opinion. They make the backbone of the snake seem so much bigger than it is, too, putting a teeny ball python on it. If they’d compared it to the spine of an anaconda it would be been better to see the size difference between “big” now and “big” then.
Also; whoever it is that thinks snakes are cursed: so are men and women, according to the Bible. Men are cursed to farm the land for eternity while women are cused with the horrors of childbirth. Snakes have it good in comparison.
Posted by: Alyssa | February 6, 2009, 11:22 pm 11:22 pm
Quietman—great observation. thanks for sharing that. i think it was the eminent biologist E.O Wilson who estimated over 80% of world species are known to man.
i have seen an authenticated film of an anaconda killing a crocodiles (and this is well known among herpetologists).
these amazing snaked have dislocatable jaws and can eat animals many times the size of their heads.
still an impressive find. but if i was a cow i still wouldn’t want to live near the Amazon River.
Posted by: Paul Wall | February 7, 2009, 11:24 am 11:24 am
oh,it’s really?
Posted by: hth | February 7, 2009, 11:21 pm 11:21 pm
Alyssa
I agree. I think they are underestimating the length. There are stories from the 19th century of snakes up to 60 feet long in both Africa and S.A. The sitings that I know of personally are from S.E. Asia (always tropical jungles).
Posted by: Quietman | February 8, 2009, 12:22 pm 12:22 pm
From a comment made on this at LiveScience that made me laugh:
“The gods took away the snakes arms and legs to make it fair for everything else.”
LOL (it was not meant to be serious)
Posted by: Quietman | February 9, 2009, 2:19 pm 2:19 pm