Researchers in India have found a large extinct snake, measuring as much as 50 ft lengthy and believed to be the biggest madtsoiid snake ever recorded. The Vasuki indicus specimen dates again 47 million years and is almost double the common measurement of comparable snakes, like pythons.
Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee found an “excellently preserved, partial vertebral column” of the snake, in accordance with their examine revealed within the journal Scientific Reports. They discovered 27 vertebrae and analyzed each to positively establish the specimen as a V. Indicus, which is extinct.
Scientific Reports
Researchers named it Vasuki, which comes from well-known Hindu fantasy concerning the serpent Vāsuki, which is wrapped across the neck of Lord Shiva, a supreme deity within the Hindu custom of Shaivism.
The snake was doubtless slow-moving and too massive to be forager, researchers stated, noting it’s extra doubtless that it was an ambush predator that constricted its prey like a python.
The specimen was totally grown and had a broad, cylindrical physique, in accordance with the examine, which stated it may have weighed as much as 2,200 kilos.
The solely different snake with an identical size is the extinct Titanoboa, which is believed to be the world’s largest snake, measuring 45 to 50 ft lengthy and three ft extensive.
The madtsoiidae household of snakes existed for round 100 million years in Africa, Europe and India. But this snake is particularly from the Indian subcontinent and existed roughly 56 to 34 million years in the past, the researchers stated.
