Titanoboa, ; meaning "titanic boa," is an
extinct genus of snake that lived approximately
60–58 million years ago, during the Paleocene
epoch, a 10-million-year period immediately
following the dinosaur extinction event. The
only known species is Titanoboa cerrejonensis,
the largest, longest, and heaviest snake ever
discovered, which supplanted the previous
record holder, Gigantophis.
Size
By comparing the sizes and shapes of its fossilized
vertebrae to those of extant snakes, researchers
estimated that the largest individuals of
T. cerrejonensis found had a total length
of around 12.8 m and weighed about 1,135 kg.
Location
In 2009, the fossils of 28 individual T. cerrejonensis
were found in the Cerrejón Formation of the
coal mines of Cerrejón in La Guajira, Colombia.
Prior to this discovery, few fossils of Paleocene-epoch
vertebrates had been found in ancient tropical
environments of South America. The snake was
discovered on an expedition by a team of international
scientists led by Jonathan Bloch, a University
of Florida vertebrate paleontologist, and
Carlos Jaramillo, a paleobotanist from the
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in
Panama.
Climate
Because snakes are ectothermic, the discovery
implies that the tropics, the creature's habitat
must have been warmer than previously thought,
averaging approximately 30 °C. The warmer
climate of the Earth during the time of T.
cerrejonensis allowed cold-blooded snakes
to attain much larger sizes than modern snakes.
Today, larger ectothermic animals are found
in the tropics, where it is hottest, and smaller
ones are found farther from the equator.
However, several researchers disagreed with
the above estimate. For example, a 2009 study
in the journal Nature applying the mathematical
model used in the above study to an ancient
lizard fossil from temperate Australia predicts
that lizards currently living in tropical
areas should be capable of reaching 33 feet,
which is obviously not the case.
In another critique published in the same
journal, Mark Denny, a specialist in biomechanics,
noted that the snake was so large and was
producing so much metabolic heat that the
ambient temperature must have been four to
six degrees cooler than the current estimate,
or the snake would have overheated.
In popular culture
In 2011, Charlie Brinson and his team created
a 10-metre-long electromechanical, robotic
reincarnation of the Titanoboa snake, using
twenty high-strength aluminum vertebrae and
forty proportional hydraulic cylinders. There
are plans to extend it to the full 15-metre
length.
On 22 March 2012, a full-scale-model replica
of a 15-metre-long, 1,135-kilogram Titanoboa
was displayed in Grand Central Station in
New York City. It was a promotion for a TV
show on the Smithsonian Channel called Titanoboa:
Monster Snake which aired 1 April 2012.
References
External links
A Snake the Size of a Plane: How did prehistoric
animals get so big? By Nina Shen Rastogi.
Feb. 5, 2009.
BBC article on Titanoboa
Titanoboa: Monster Snake at the Internet Movie
Database
