Although the dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago, Earth still had no shortage of reptilian predators. One of these lived in Colombia in South America, from 60 to 58 million years ago, and was the largest snake in the history of the world*.
Titanoboa (image by Nobu Tamura) could grow up to 42 feet long, and may have been capable of getting even bigger. As its name suggests, it was a boa – or, more scientifically, a boid, belonging to the same group of snakes as modern tree boas and anacondas.
(Image by Jason Bourque.)
When Titanoboa fossils were first discovered in 2009, it was believed to have been an apex predator. Numerous sensationalist news articles were published, describing Titanoboa as the monster-king of the Colombian jungles who could totally have beaten up T. rex, except T. rex was so scared when he heard about Titanoboa that he went extinct just so he wouldn’t have to fight it!
However, later studies proved that this was not the case. Although Titanoboa was quite massive, and definitely carnivorous, it was probably not a hunter of large land animals. Instead, it was probably a fish-eater, and in that regard, it is unique among the boids. However, the animal’s massive size would probably have allowed it to snack on the occasional crocodile, as pictured in the Smithsonian’s reconstruction.
In ARK: Survival Evolved, it has a frilled lizard’s neck frill, for some reason.
Prior to the discovery of Titanoboa, the largest known snake was Gigantophis, discovered in Egypt in 1901 – although
at a maximum estimated size of 30 to 35 feet, it was only marginally larger than the biggest modern-day snakes. Gigantophis lived about 20 million years later than Titanoboa, and was part of an entirely different family of snakes, the now-extinct Madtsoiidae. Unlike Titanoboa, the madtsoiids preyed on land animals, killing them via constriction.
Here’s Gigantophis fucking up a crocodile. I couldn’t find an adequate source for this image; if you know of the original artist, let me know.
*If you don’t count mosasaurs, which some paleontologists do. But that deserves a post of its own…
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