The scientists also found many skeletons of giant turtles and extinct primitive crocodile relatives that likely were eaten by the snake, he said. Its body was about as wide as the aisle where the researchers are standing. ![]() The world’s largest vertebrate on earth for 10 million years, Titanoboa grew up to 45 feet long and weighted 1.25 tons-about the weight of a small car. Jason Head, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto in Mississauga and the paper’s senior author, described it this way: “The snake’s body was so wide that if it were moving down the hall and decided to come into my office to eat me, it would literally have to squeeze through the door.”īesides tipping the scales at an estimated 1.25 tons, the snake lived during the Paleocene Epoch, a 10-million-year period immediately following the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, Bloch said.Īssistant curator of vertebrate paleontology Jonathan Bloch (foreground) holds vertebra from the Titanoboa while graduate assistants Alex Hastings (farther back) and Jason Bourque (in distance) illustrate the estimated mid- and end-points of the giant snake. “The snake that tried to eat Jennifer Lopez in the movie Anaconda is not as big as the one we found.” “Truly enormous snakes really spark people’s imagination, but reality has exceeded the fantasies of Hollywood,” said Bloch, who is studying the snake. Partial skeletons of a new giant, boa-constrictor-like snake named Titanoboa found in Colombia by an international team of scientists and now at the Florida Museum of Natural History are estimated to be 42 to 45 feet long, the length of the T-rex “Sue” displayed at Chicago’s Field Museum, said Florida Museum of Natural History vertebrate paleontologist assistant curator Jonathan Bloch, who co-led the expedition with Carlos Jaramillo, a paleobotanist from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. The largest snake the world has ever known-as long as a school bus and as heavy as a small car-ruled tropical ecosystems only 6 million years after the demise of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex, according to a new discovery published in the journal Nature. ![]() The anaconda measured a relatively short 17 feet long. Based on the diameter of the fossilized Titanoboa vertebrae, researchers estimate that Titanoboa, which lived 60 million years ago, probably grew 45 feet long. For further information, visit the Museum’s Web site, Florida Museum of Natural History vertebrate paleontologist Jonathan Bloch shows the size difference between vertebrae belonging to the giant snake Titanoboa cerrejonensis, left, and an anaconda. Located at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, this is Florida’s state museum of natural history, dedicated to understanding, preserving and interpreting biological diversity and cultural heritage. Permanent exhibits include Northwest Florida: Waterways & Wildlife South Florida People & Environments Florida Fossils: Evolution of Life & Land and the McGuire Center for Lepidoptera and Biodiversity, which features the screened, outdoor Butterfly Rainforest exhibit with hundreds of live butterflies. At the Florida Museum of Natural History, visitors may enjoy hundreds of exotic butterflies in a rainforest setting, witness a South Florida Calusa Indian welcoming ceremony, experience a life-sized limestone cave, and see a mammoth and mastodon from the last Ice Age. Members of any of our partner organizations receive Natural History as a benefit of their museum membership. The following story is contributed by the Florida Museum of Natural History, one of Natural History magazine’s Museum Partners.
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