We went a step further and asked, how warm would the Earth have to be to support a body of this size?' 'At its greatest width, the snake would have come up to about your hips,' said geologist David Polly of Indiana University, who identified the position of the fossil vertebrae, which made an estimate possible. Named Titanoboa cerrejonensis by its discoverers, the size of the snake's vertebrae suggest it weighed 1,140 kilograms (2,500 pounds) and measured 13 meters (42.7 feet) nose to tail tip.Ī paper describing the find appears in this week's issue of the journal Nature. Scientists have recovered fossils from a 60-million-year-old South American snake whose length and weight might make today's anacondas seem like garter snakes. Telephone numbers or other contact information mayīe out of date please see current contact information at media

This material is available primarily for archival This artist's rendering of the largest snake on record shows its size it lived in or near water.