Posted on 02/04/2009 10:32:57 AM PST by Free ThinkerNY
After the extinction of the dinosaurs 65m years ago, new giants evolved to terrorise life on Earth: snakes as long as a bus and as wide as a door.
On Thursday an international scientific team will announce in the journal Nature the discovery of Titanoboa, the largest snake that has ever lived. Its fossils were found in the Cerrejen coal mines of Colombia.
Titanoboa was a constrictor like today’s boas and anacondas, preying on crocodiles and giant turtles about 60m years ago in what was then a steamy tropical rainforest. At a conservative estimate it grew 13 metres long and weighed more than a tonne.
“Truly enormous snakes really spark people’s imagination but reality has exceeded the fantasies of Hollywood,” said Jonathan Bloch who is studying Titanoboa fossils at the University of Florida. “The snake that tried to eat Jennifer Lopez in the movie ‘Anaconda’ is not as big as the one we found.”
Jason Head, a palaeontologist at the University of Toronto, put it another 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.”
Titanoboa lived 5m years after the global catastrophe, probably an asteroid strike, that wiped out the dinosaurs. But the discovery is of more than curiosity value: Titanoboa’s body size provides important evidence for climate research.
The researchers estimate that such an enormous cold-blooded snake would have needed an average annual temperature around 33ºC to live. That means equatorial forests 60m years ago were at least 5ºC hotter than their equivalents today.
This conclusion will be controversial for climatology, said Matthew Huber, a climate change scientist at Purdue University who was not part of the Titanoboa research. Until now, most models of past climate suggested that the tropics heated up much much less than the temperate and polar regions during Earth’s “greenhouse periods” when carbon dioxide were very high.
If tropical forests could survive in such heat 60m years ago, today’s forests may be more resilient to man-made global warming than many scientists believed.
He sank the ark.
Thanks for posting this, I love exotic animals.
I wonder if they were good with bar-b-que sauce?
Most smake needs something to cover up the taste.
Obama’s ancestor?
Just by the title I thought this was about Ted Kennedy.
You owe me a keyboard. ;-)
Sorry about that.
ROFLMAO!
Someone needs to photoshop James Carville’s head onto this snake...it would be perfect.
alas...
Ancient fossil find: This snake could eat a cow!
WRALNews.com | February 4, 2009 | MALCOLM RITTER
Posted on 02/04/2009 8:54:31 AM PST by NCDragon
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2178208/posts
Largest snake was ‘size of bus’
news.bbc | Wednesday, 4 February 2009
Posted on 02/04/2009 10:07:43 AM PST by JoeProBono
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2178275/posts
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Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
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Tastes like chicken.
Largest prehistoric snake slithers into record books
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I thought for sure this was a story about Pelosi. Disappointed!!!!
that’s big
OH MY, is Nancy having an orgasm right there?
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