How do scientists found the fossil remains of the worlds biggest snake?
Cerrejón is a coal mine located in the Guajira department in the north of Colombia.It is the largest mining operation in Colombia and among the largest open-pit coal mines in the world. An international team of scientists announced Wednesday the discovery in northern Colombia of fossil remains of the largest snake ever known to have lived. Scientists have found the fossilised bones of a “monster” snake that was more than 40 feet long and weighed more than a ton.The scientists named the 2,500 pound, 43 ft. long snake Titanoboa cerrejonensis, meaning titanic boa from Cerrejon, the open-pit coal mine where the fossils were discovered.
Paleontologists compared around a dozen vertebrae, which are ten centimetres long, with the length of existing snakes to estimate the beast must have reached 42ft (13m). The ten centimeter vertebrae were about twice the width of the largest taken from a 19.5ft (6m) modern-day anaconda. None of the ribs included in the fossil, found at a site in northern Colombia, are complete, but the size and curvature of the fragments suggest it was the largest non-marine vertebrate from the age immediately following the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The discovery of Titanoboa, a relative of the boa constrictor, also has implications for our understanding of the evolution of global climate because the snake would have required temperatures that are hotter than in today’s tropics. Titanoboa, described in the weekly science journal Nature, was dug up at Cerrejon, one of the world’s largest open-pit mines, where as well as the snake researchers discovered fossils of their prey includ
