A colossal snake dating back millions of years ago might’ve been longer than a school bus or T-Rex — and will likely be recorded as one of the longest slithering reptiles to ever roam the Earth, researchers revealed Thursday.
Twenty-seven vertebrae fossils discovered near a coal mine in India unveiled a snake that was anywhere between 36 feet and 50 feet and lived as far back as 47 million years ago in swampy evergreen forests.
The monstrous python likely weighed up to 2,200 pounds or about a ton, according to an entry in the journal Scientific Reports.
But the snake, dubbed the Vasuki indicus, wasn’t likely to chase down its prey quickly and would not have been venomous, the researchers believe.
“Considering its large size, Vasuki was a slow-moving ambush predator that would subdue its prey through constriction,” co-author of the study, Debajit Datta, said.
Scientists chose the name after “the mythical snake king Vasuki, who wraps around the neck of the Hindu deity Shiva,” said Datta, of the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.
Fragments of the snake’s backbone were found in 2005 by another co-author, Sunil Bajpi, in western India. Researchers studied more than 20 fossil vertebrae in skeletons of living snakes to figure out the size of Vasuki.
The longest Tyrannosaurus rex specimen has been measured at 40.5 feet, which means the Vasuki could have been a tad longer even if it wasn’t nearly as massive as the dinosaur.
Other fossils nearby where the snake was found included catfish, turtles, crocodiles and primitive whales, which indicates what the snake might’ve eaten up, Datta said.
“Vasuki was a majestic animal. It may well have been a gentle giant, resting its head on a high porch formed by coiling its massive body for most parts of the day or moving sluggishly through the swamp like an endless train. In some ways it reminds me of Kaa from ‘The Jungle Book,’” Datta said in reference to the fictional giant snake.
The newly confirmed snake is similar in size to the largest known snake, called Titanoboa, which was roughly 42 feet and lived in what is now Colombia 60 million years ago.
The pair of monster-sized ancient snakes lived when temperatures on Earth were scorching hot, said Jason Head, a Cambridge University paleontologist who wasn’t involved in the study.
“These snakes are giant cold-blooded animals,” he said, noting a snake needs high temperatures to grow.
With Post wires
