By
David Derbyshire
Last updated at 11:08 AM on 05th February 2009
A killer snake that was longer than a bus, as heavy as a small car
and which could swallow an animal the size of a cow, has been
discovered by scientists.
The 45ft long monster - named
Titanoboa - was so big that it lived on a diet of crocodiles and giant
turtles, squeezing them to death and devouring them whole.
Artist's impression of the giant snake Titanoboa cerrejonensis which measured 45ft
Weighing
an impressive 1.25 tons, it slithered around the tropical forests of
South America 60million years ago, just five million years after the
last dinosaurs were wiped out.
Partial skeletons of the boa
constrictor-like prehistoric killer were found in a Colombian coal mine
by an international team of fossil hunters.
They estimate that it was larger than the fictional snake featured in the Jennifer Lopez horror movie Anaconda.
Dr
Jonathan Bloch of the University of Florida, one of the researchers who
announced the find, said: 'Truly enormous snakes really spark people's
imagination, but reality has exceeded the fantasies of Hollywood.
'The snake that tried to eat Jennifer Lopez in the movie Anaconda was not as big as the one we found.'
Attack: Jennifer Lopez tries to save Ice Cube
from a giant snake in Anaconda. The 45ft long anaconda found by fossil
hunters was far bigger
The fossilised remains were found in an open cast mine in Cerrejon, Colombia with turtles and crocodiles.
The creature lived during the Palaeocene epoch - the 10million-year
period that followed the destruction of the dinosaurs by a giant
asteroid or comet, and helps fill a missing gap in evolution, the
scientists report today in the journal Nature.
Before the
discovery, there had been no fossil vertebrates - or animals with back
bones - between 65million and 55million years ago in tropical South
America.
Dr Jason Head, of the Smithsonian's National Museum
of Natural History, in Washington DC, said: 'Now we have a window into
the time just after the dinosaurs went extinct and can actually see
what the animals replacing them looked like.'
He added: 'This
colossal, boa constrictor-like creature stretched longer than a city
bus and weighed more than a car. It's the biggest snake the world has
ever known.
Vertebrae of the world's largest snake (r) and that of a 17ft anaconda
'The
snake's body was so wide that if it were moving down the hall and
decided to come into my office to eat me, it would literally have to
squeeze through the door.'
The size of the snake showed that conditions were around 10C hotter than today - around 30 to 34C on average.
Snakes
and other cold-blooded animals are limited in body size by the
temperature where they live.The largest reptiles and bugs live in the
world's hottest places close to the equator.
Hunting for fossils
is tricky in the forest-covered tropics because so little rock is
exposed. However, the open cast mining exposed huge swaths of rock,
including the remains of the prehistoric snake.
Dr
Bloch said: 'It was a rain-forest like today, but it was even hotter
and the cold-blooded reptiles were all substantially larger. The result
was, among other things, the largest snakes the world has ever seen -
and hopefully ever will.'
Off the scale: World's biggest snake bones
According
to the Guinness Book of World Records, the longest snake ever measured
was 33ft in length. The heaviest - a python - weighed 403lb.
British
scientist Dr David Polly who was involved in identifying the snake at
Queen Mary, University of London, said: 'At its greatest width, the
snake would have come up to about your hips. The size is pretty
amazing.'
Last year, scientists revealed the smallest snake
in the world - a four-inch long creature living in Barbados that is as
thin as a strand of spaghetti and so tiny it could fit on a 10p coin.