February 5, 2009
titanic boa from Cerrejon
Fossils from northeastern Colombia reveal the biggest snake ever discovered: a behemoth that stretched 42 to 45 feet long, reaching more than 2,500 pounds.
Graduate students unwrapping the fossils “realized they were looking at the bones of a snake. Not only a snake, but a really big snake.”
So they quickly consulted the skeleton of a 17-foot anaconda for comparison. A backbone from that creature is about the size of a silver dollar, Bloch said, while a backbone from Titanoboa is “the size of a large Florida grapefruit.”
So far the scientists have found about 180 fossils of backbone and ribs that came from about two dozen individual snakes, and now they hope to go back to Colombia to find parts of the skull, Bloch said.
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