26 May,2014 12:19 PM IST | | IANS
Move over anaconda. At nearly 50-feet long and weighing in at 1,124 kgs, Titanoboa is by far the biggest snake that ever lived on earth.
New York: Move over anaconda. At nearly 50-feet long and weighing in at 1,124 kgs, Titanoboa is by far the biggest snake that ever lived on earth.
Sixty million years ago in the swampy waters of what is now Colombia, the monster snake - 10 times as heavy as the average green anaconda - hunted lungfish, huge turtles and giant crocodiles, media reports said.
"It was so outsized that almost certainly it would have spent a large part of its time in water," David Polly, a vertebrate paleontologist at Indiana University, was quoted as saying.
Titanoboa fossils were recovered from Cerrejon coal mine, located in the basin of the Rancheria river in Colombia.
Paleontologists found titanoboa fossils in the rocks built from the sediments.
A full body replica of the monster snake is on display at Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
