Researchers on the Department of Earth Sciences at IIT-Roorkee made a groundbreaking discovery in Gujarat, unearthing the fossil of a 47-million-year-old snake. The snake is touted to be “one of largest known terrestrial snakes that ever lived”.
According to the examine printed in ‘Scientific Reports’, the snake was named Vasuki indicus by the scientists after the snake king related to Lord Shiva. Vasuki belonged to the extinct Madtsoiidae snake household, estimated to be 11-15 metres lengthy and should have weighed almost a tonne. Scientists have recovered 27 vertebrae from it. The snake, if it was alive, would have regarded like a big python and wouldn’t have been venomous.
The species belonged to the now-extinct Madtsoiidae snake household and represented a singular lineage that originated in India, as per the examine. The examine additional revealed that the dimensions of the snake is similar to the longest identified to have ever lived – the extinct Titanoboa. The snake is believed to have existed for round 100 million years from “Late Cretaceous” to “Late Pleistocene” and lived in a broad geographical vary of Africa, Europe and India.
IIT Roorkee shared a put up on X concerning the discovery with the caption, “IIT Roorkee’s Prof. Sunil Bajpai & Debajit Datta discovered Vasuki Indicus, a 47-million-year-old snake species in Kutch, Gujarat. Estimated at 11-15 meters, this extinct snake sheds light on India’s prehistoric biodiversity. Published in Scientific Reports.”
Take a have a look at the put up shared by IIT Roorkee right here:
“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,” Debajit Datta, a postdoctoral researcher in palaeontology at IIT Roorkee and the lead creator of the examine, advised The Guardian.
Sunil Bajpai, a palaeontologist, professor at Roorkee and the examine’s co-author, advised the outlet, “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.”
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