The discovered species of snake, named Titanoboa, originates from South America. It possesses an impressive length of up to 15 meters and weighs around 2,500 pounds, making it one of the largest snakes ever identified. This ancient creature is estimated to have roamed approximately 58-60 million years ago, spanning a range of about 1,200 kilometers.
Indeed, the ruler of the ancient rainforest was estimated to have lived around 60 million years ago.
This snake became the largest known animaI on Earth after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Its enormous size was influenced by the hot and humid tropical climate at that time. Fossils of Titanoboa were found in Cerrejón, Colombia, and examining them suggests that under current circumstances, it would have had little chance of survival.
Titanoboa is a genus of snakes that lived approximately 60 to 58 million years ago, during the Paleocene epoch. The only known species is Titanoboa cerrejonensis, the largest snake ever discovered.
The size and shape of Titanoboa were estimated based on fossil evidence and comparative analysis with modern snake species. Researchers estimated that Titanoboa cerrejonensis was about 13 meters long, weighed around 1,135 kilograms, and had a diameter of about 1 meter at its thickest point in its body.
The discovery of 28 Titanoboa individuals in coal mines at Cerrejón in northern Colombia in 2009 contributed to our understanding of this ancient snake species. The fossils of Titanoboa were found in an excavation led by an international team of scientists, including a paleontologist specializing in vertebrates at the University of Florida, Jonathan Bloch, and Carlos Jaramillo, a paleobotanist from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.
Since snakes are cold-blooded animals, this discovery implies that the tropical region where Titanoboa lived must have been warmer than previously believed, with average temperatures above 32°C (90°F).