Few animals really merit the hype they get for being trulymassive . While theFat Bear Week winnerhas managed to stack on the pounds it has nothing on the absolutelyenormous creaturesthat once stray the Earth . And thoughdinosaursoften get all the credit , another giant reptile is worth mentioning : meetTitanoboa .
While the name might sound like the title of aB movie , Titanoboa cerrejonensiswas slithering around in the Paleocene about 66 - 56 million years ago . The enormous snake filled the niche left by the quenching of the dinosaur , becoming the top predator in the tropical South American jungle in which it live on .
In northern Colombia in the realm known as Cerrejón , one of the world ’s most abundant fossil bank deposit inside a mine revealed the bone of this striking snake . Theresearcherscompared the two well - preserved craniate to mod - day live snake metal money and worked out an approximate sizing .
reckon to have been around 12.8 to 14.3 meters ( 42 - 47 feet ) long and forecast to weigh over a MT , this colossal snake live on in an area of thick forest and swampland , probably terrorizing all the other brute around at that time .
“ Cerrejón is the best , and probably the only , window on a complete ancient tropical ecosystem anywhere in the earthly concern , ” Carlos Jaramillo , a palaeontologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute , toldSmithsonian Magazine .
These fossils unwrap thatTitanoboawas a extremity of the Boidae family . Likely a non - virulent species , Titanoboawas probably not so dissimilar to modern - mean solar day feather boa constrictors ; but , rather than using its giant body to suppress its prey to death or kill them via asphyxiation , it would have been an lying in wait piranha , consuming fair game with its enormous jaw .
These prey would likely have been jumbo turtles or crocodile - like species , sincefossilsof these were also observe in the mine .
Titanoboais the largest snake to have ever lived . pass on that it was so large , the researchers suggested that the tropics would have necessitate to be at average temperatures of at least 30 - 34 ° coke ( 86 - 93 ° atomic number 9 ) to support the metabolism of this jumbo creature . In this way , these fossils slough visible radiation not only onTitanoboaitself , but also the surround in which it was king .
