Fossil hunters in India have found the largest snake ever discovered

Two researchers discovered what may be the longest snake ever to crawl across the continent when they discovered the fossilized remains of a partial spinal column in western India. Measurements and calculations by the researchers showed that the ancient snake, identified as Vasuki indicus, grew approximately longer than a school bus. This spring, a pair of biologists from the India Institute of Technology Roorkee published an article in Scientific Reports about their wild discovery in the Panandhro Lignite Mine in Western India. They say Vasuki could be the longest and largest specimen of the extinct Madtsoid snake family in the world. These giant constrictors were found in what is now Madagascar, South America, India, Africa and the European archipelago from the Cretaceous to the Cenozoic, or about 100,000 to 125 million years ago. The earliest madtsoiid snakes lived on the supercontinent known as Gondwana, or the landmass consisting of Africa, Europe and the Americas, before spreading via continental drift. Although Vasuki probably only appeared about 60 million years ago, it was probably the largest snake of all, measuring more than 13.5 meters in length and weighing more than a ton. ‘Our… estimates show that Vasuki was not only the largest madtsoiid [snake] but one of the largest snakes ever reported,” the authors write. The location where the fossilized skeleton was found. Courtesy of Scientific Reports The warm, tropical climate of the region and the era in which the giant snake lived helps explain their overwhelming size. These snakes lived in weather with an average temperature of 82 degrees Fahrenheit. They were probably so large that, according to biologists’ best estimate, they could not have lived in trees, and the fossils did not indicate that they were aquatic snakes. Instead, the enormous species likely lived on swampy ground near water, a habitat typical of the area where the fossils were found. In terms of size, Vasuki indicus’ only direct competitor for the honor of ‘largest snake ever’ is Titanoboa cerrejonensis, a water snake that lived in the Middle and Late Pleistocene. The first Titanoboa fossils were discovered in modern-day Colombia in the early 2000s by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Titanoboa probably grew to be 45 feet long and also weighed more than 2,500 pounds. (If you want some nightmare fuel, check out the Smithsonian film Titanoboa: Monster Snake.) A replica of the Titanoboa, which was similar in size. Michael Loccisano “It is worth noting that the largest estimates of Vasuki’s body length appear to exceed those of Titanoboa, even though the vertebral dimensions of [Vasuki] are slightly smaller than those of Titanoboa,” the authors write. In other words, it’s not clear which serpent actually controlled Earth’s history, and drawing concrete conclusions from a handful of vertebrae is speculation at best. But if both species were alive today, they would give our modern python hunters a run for their money.