Vasuki indicus discovery: An almost 50 toes lengthy snake species — one of many longest and largest in recorded historical past — as soon as existed within the Indian subcontinent. The reptile, Vasuki indicus, lived in India practically 47 million years in the past, fossil stays discovered from Gujarat’s Panandhro Lignite Mine in Kutch recommend. The species was found by Prof. Sunil Bajpai and Debajit Datta from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee, who mentioned their discover sheds gentle on the prehistoric biodiversity of India.
“It is worth noting that the largest body-length estimates of Vasuki appear to exceed that of Titanoboa, even though the vertebral dimensions of the Indian taxon are slightly smaller than those of Titanoboa,” Bajpai and Datta wrote of their examine revealed in Scientific Reports.
The fossil stays reveal a number of intriguing particulars concerning the species.
Estimated to be 11-15 metres lengthy, the snake species was greater than the dimensions of a T. rex. The massive measurement of the Vasuki indicus advised that it was a slow-moving ambush predator, akin to the modern-day anaconda, the authors famous In the examine revealed earlier this week.
The species was given the precise title of Vasuki indicus in acknowledgement the nation of its origin, India. Vasuki is revered because the king of the snakes in Hindu mythology, and is worshiped on particular days like Nag Panchami.
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What We Know About Vasuki Indicus
Vasuki indicus belongs to the Madtsoiidae household, and “thrived during a warm geological interval”, the study noted. Researchers suggest that the warm tropical temperatures of Gondwanaland, averaging around 28°C, may have contributed to the substantial size and growth of this giant reptile. There is a recognised correlation suggesting that higher ambient temperatures can enable larger growth in animals.
Madtsoiids were also found in Europe and Africa, besides Asia. The IIT-Roorkee professors’ findings suggest Vasuki indicus represents a large lineage of Madtsoiidae that originated in the Indian subcontinent and then spread to southern Eurasia, before reaching North Africa around 50 million years ago — that’s nearly 15 million years after the dinosaurs went extinct.
Madtsoiidae, an extinct lineage of terrestrial snakes, thrived on the Indian subcontinent over a span of approximately 100 million years, from the Late Cretaceous to the Late Pleistocene, dating from roughly 98 million to 11,000 years ago. During the Late Cretaceous period, the supercontinent Pangea had fragmented into two major landmasses: Laurasia, encompassing North America, Europe, and Northern Asia to the north; and Gondwanaland to the south, which included present-day Africa, Antarctica, South America, Australia, and the Indian subcontinent.
The fossils of Vasuki indicus extracted from the early Lutetian grey shale layers of the Naredi Formation at the Kutch mine include an “excellently preserved, partial vertebral column”.
The discovery sheds gentle on the biogeographic patterns of dispersion and diversification throughout the Madtsoiidae, significantly throughout Gondwanan continents. The presence of this large snake within the Eocene of India signifies a posh historical past of faunal exchanges between the Indian subcontinent and different landmasses prior to finish integration into the Eurasian plate.
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