#TITANOBOA VS ANACONDA SKIN#
#TITANOBOA VS ANACONDA FULL#

#TITANOBOA VS ANACONDA FULL#

Only when it’s warm can they operate at their full potential. Plant fossils suggest that the temperature of its jungle habitat averaged a humid 90 degrees - and may well have been hotter.Įctothermic animals rely on external heat sources for their energy.

Titanoboa’s astonishing dimensions were the result of its hot climate. Its astonishing dominance has led some to wonder - what would have happened if Titanoboa hadn’t gone extinct?Ĭristóbal Alvarado Minic/Flickr This is your ordinary, run-of-the-mill anaconda. As a result, they don’t usually make it into the fossil record.īut remarkably, over the next few years, the team uncovered the remains of 28 enormous serpents and not one but three skull fragments, allowing them to piece together a full-scale replica of a snake so large and so frightening that it left no doubt about its place in the new jungles of the world.Įven among the massive creatures of the ancient rainforest, Titanoboa was king: it was the apex predator of its era, a creature as unquestionably the ruler of its environment as the Tyrannosaurus Rex was in its own time. The problem is that snake jaws are made powerful by their muscles, not their bones - their skulls are actually remarkably fragile and usually crumble before sediment can build over them. Though they might uncover more vertebrae, it would take a skull to show them what the enormous serpent was really capable of - and fossilized snake skulls are notoriously difficult to find. One particular find, however, was unlikely.

The paleontologists who discovered Titanoboa describe their shock. Millions of years and dozens of feet of rock later, the bone became part of rich coal fields - which meant there might be others nearby. Their working theory was that the massive snake to which the vertebra belonged had been caught in a mudslide that buried it. It was an incredible find, and researchers immediately began combing the mines for more fragments of the jungle titan. They also uncovered a massive vertebra - a vertebra far too large to belong to any jungle serpent on record. More digging uncovered remarkable specimens: giant turtles and crocodiles, and some of the first bananas, avocados, and bean plants that ever sprouted on planet earth. Further study revealed that the fossil belonged to the Paleocene era - which meant the mine might once have been the site of one of the world’s first rainforests. The discovery was an intriguing one: it suggested that once upon a time, the area had been home to a sprawling jungle. The story of its reappearance began in 2002 when a student uncovered a fossilized leaf on a visit to the massive coal mine at Cerrejón in Colombia. Titanoboa is a shockingly recent discovery. Scared yet? Uncovering The Monstrous Snake Of Prehistoric South America Wikimedia Commons Imagine that alligator tail is your arm. It could kill you before you even had a chance to scream. What happened next scientists agree on: the great snake swallowed its giant prey whole - and if you had the terrifying experience of staring into Titanoboa’s mouth, you would be no exception.

Some scientists think it killed by constricting and asphyxiating its prey, while others argue that though it looked like a boa constrictor (the resemblance that gave it its name), it behaved like an anaconda, lurking in the shallows and ambushing unsuspecting animals with a stunning blow.

#TITANOBOA VS ANACONDA SKIN#

In the hot, humid jungle, Titanoboa fit right in: its brown skin camouflaged it perfectly as it slunk through muddy waters. At its thickest point, Titanoboa was three feet wide, which is longer than a human arm. That’s as long as a semitrailer you see on highways and about twice as heavy as a polar bear.

This prehistoric species grew up to 50 feet in length and weighed as much as 2,500 pounds. The death of the giant reptiles left a vacuum at the top of the food chain, and Titanoboa gladly stepped up. Titanoboa, the enormous serpent of legend, thrived in the tropical jungles of South America some five million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs. See the humans in the background for a comparison in size.

Titanoboa vs anaconda