In a February 2009 press release from the Florida Museum of Natural History, it was announced that an international team of scientists discovered in South America a partial skeleton of a snake that far exceeds anyone’s ideas of how large a snake could actually become. Dating the skeleton told researchers that the snake lived only 6 or so million years after the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, or the Paleocene epoch, which directly succeeded the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Titanoboa in Perspective
The snake, appropriately named "Titanoboa" (Titanoboa cerrejonensis), was about the length of a Tyrannosaurus rex, or about 40-to-50 feet long. At the thickest point in its body, the creature measured about 40 or so inches in diameter. These measurements would put the Titanoboa cerrejonensis at twice the size of one of the world’s largest living snakes, the green anaconda.
The modern green anaconda has been known to reach lengths of about 23 feet, although reports put that number up in the hundreds of feet (these reports are highly unlikely). Only one living snake surpasses the anaconda in length – the reticulated python. This creature can grow to about 30 feet. Despite these gargantuan sizes, Titanoboa cerrejonensis puts them both to shame.
Imagine the movie Anaconda, the one with Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube. The monster CG snake in this movie still wouldn’t be as large as Titanoboa cerrejonensis.
The most telling part of this discovery was a single vertebra of the Titanoboa cerrejonensis. Graduate students and researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida realized the bone belonged to a gargantuan, constrictor-like snake.
Why the Titanoboa cerrejonensis Matters
South America, in the northern part of Colombia to be more specific, has yielded very few larger fossilized discoveries in the past, which is one of the reasons this find was so unexpected. Because of its lush vegetation, there is very little exposed rock, leaving next to nothing on the surface for paleontologists. The Cerrejon Coal Mine in Northern Colombia presented fossil-hunters an “unparalleled opportunity for discovery.”
According to vertebrate paleontologist Jonathon Bloch, who is studying the snake’s remains at the University of Florida, the discovery of Titanoboa cerrejonensis reveals a look into the life and ways of reptiles just after the dinosaur extinction. Because of the creature’s massive size, he can safely assume that the Amazonian ecosystems were already in place.
“If you look at cold-blooded animals and their distribution on the planet today, the large ones are in the tropics, where it's hottest, and they become smaller the farther away they are from the equator,” he said. It is likely, too, that temperatures were much hotter on the equator than they are today, based on the snake’s size. Larger reptiles (think Komodo dragons, anacondas, and reticulated pythons) tend to live in the hottest climates, the smaller ones in the cooler zones.
Snake growth has long been a mystery for evolutionary biologists and herpetologists; there are many theories about the maximum length and size, but this discovery blew those theories out of the water. While some postulated only a decade ago that snakes maxed out at 40 feet, Titanoboa cerrejonensis brings a new perspective on things.
It is unlikely that modern giant snakes can reach these gargantuan sizes, but Titanoboa cerrejonensis is certainly forcing scientists to pause and consider new possibilities.
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