WASHINGTON – Fossil vertebrae unearthed in a lignite mine are the stays of one of many largest snakes that ever lived, a monster estimated at as much as 15m in size – longer than a T. rex – that prowled the swamps of India round 47 million years in the past.
Scientists stated on April 18 they’ve recovered 27 vertebrae from the snake, together with a number of nonetheless in the identical position as they might have been when the limbless reptile was alive. They stated the snake, which they named Vasuki indicus, would have regarded like a modern-day massive python and wouldn’t have been venomous.
The mine is situated within the Panandhro space of the Kutch district in western India’s state of Gujarat. Lignite is the bottom grade of coal.
“Considering its large size, Vasuki was a slow-moving ambush predator that would subdue its prey through constriction like anacondas and pythons. This snake lived in a marshy swamp near the coast at a time when global temperatures were higher than today,” stated Dr Debajit Datta, a postdoctoral researcher in paleontology on the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITR) and lead writer of the research revealed within the journal Scientific Reports.
Because of the unfinished nature of the Vasuki stays, the researchers gave an estimated size vary of 11 to 15m and a tough estimate of a metric ton in weight.
Vasuki, named after the snake king related to the Hindu deity Shiva, rivals in dimension one other big prehistoric snake known as Titanoboa, whose fossils have been found in a coal mine in northern Colombia, as introduced in 2009. Titanoboa, estimated at 13m lengthy and 1.1 metric tons, lived 58 to 60 million years in the past. The reticulated python is the longest extant snake, typically measuring 6 to 9m.
“The estimated body length of Vasuki is comparable to that of Titanoboa, although the vertebrae of Titanoboa are slightly larger than those of Vasuki. However, at this point, we cannot say if Vasuki was more massive or slender compared to Titanoboa,” stated paleontologist and research co-author Sunil Bajpai, a professor at IITR.
These big snakes lived in the course of the Cenozoic period, which started after the dinosaur age ended 66 million years in the past.
Perhaps the largest-known Tyrannosaurus rex is a specimen named Sue on the Field Museum in Chicago, at 12.3 meters lengthy, although a T. rex would have been extra large than these snakes.
