Reply #5: Prehistoric snake was as long as Tyrannosaurus [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Prehistoric snake was as long as Tyrannosaurus
Reuters | 02/05/2009 3:31 PM

WASHINGTON – It was the all-time titan of snakes -- a monster as long as a Tyrannosaurus rex that stalked a steamy South American rain forest after the demise of the dinosaurs and ate crocodiles for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

An international team of scientists on Wednesday announced the discovery in northern Colombia of fossil remains of the largest snake ever known to have lived. It is named Titanoboa cerrejonensis, meaning titanic boa from Cerrejon, the open-pit coal mine where its fossils were found.

Titanoboa was at least 43 feet long, weighed 2,500 pounds (1,140 kg) and its massive body was at least 3 feet (1 meter) wide, they wrote in the journal Nature.

It lived 58 million to 60 million years ago, when Earth's animal kingdom was still recovering from the mass extinction that doomed the dinosaurs and many other creatures 65 million years ago when an asteroid hit near the Yucatan coast of Mexico. It may have been the largest non-ocean vertebrate then on Earth.

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http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/world/02/05/09/prehistoric-snake-was-long-tyrannosaurus