04 February,2009 11:45 AM IST | | PTI
Gigantic snakes as long as 13 meters and as heavy as a medium sedan car, which can make the anacondas and pythons of today look tiny, once slithered in the rain forests of the planet, latest discovery of fossils in Latin American country Colombia reveals.
The 60-million year-old fossils found in Columbia by an international team of scientists are a proof that these reptiles were dotting the landscape of the South American rain forests six million years after the extinction of the dreaded predator dinosaur 'Tyrannosaurus rex'.
Christened as "Titanoboa" these 1,100 kg monster snake was a non-venomous constrictor, like anacondas and boas, ate giant turtles and crocodiles which were the other prominent reptile species in rain forests during Paleocene Epoch, five to six million years immediately following the extinction of dinosaurs from the Earth.
"This new species of snake is the largest ever known, living or fossil. The largest living snakes are pythons and anacondas, which normally grow up to about six meters long and occasionally get as big as nine meters. The largest fossil snakes known up to now got to be about 10 meters long. This new snake was normally about 13 meters long, so by far the largest known," said David Polly, geologist from Indiana University, US.
The findings published in the latest edition of the journal 'Nature' will help in understanding the impact of temperatures on the size of cold-blooded species.
Scientists say that body size of snakes and other reptiles get limited by the ambient temperature of where they live.
