Scientists discover the fossils of a bus-sized snake

[D.B. Cooper]

Fossils from northeastern Colombia reveal the biggest snake ever discovered: a behemoth that stretched 42 to 45 feet long, reaching more than 2,500 pounds.
“This thing weighs more than a bison and is longer than a city bus,” enthused snake expert Jack Conrad of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was familiar with the find.
“It could easily eat something the size of a cow. A human would just be toast immediately.”

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Science/...263556-ap.html


This is so cool, shame we'll never see one alive.

[Kamos]

We must clone it for umm scientific purposes, yessss...

Seriously cool stuff.

[CtrlAltDe1337]

There are a lot of giant fossils like this (of other animals), but nice find

[Roman_Wolf]

so glad it's just a fossil. Snakes scare the crap out of me

[Rhaegar1]

Off course it's ridiculous to measure a snake in feets, they don't even have them! (bad joke but it was an opportunity to whine about stupid measurment units)

anyway, nice find.

[Iscariott]

If this thing wasnt extinct already I'd say we should get on that. 40 foot 1.5 ton snakes can go to hell.

[C-Rob]

funny, ever seen animal planet's, "Lost Tapes"? They had a story of a giant snake that killed a guard dog and ate two people, then never appeared again. Of course, that show is just fantasy, but still- just think of a prehistoric lifeform like that making it through and surving til' this day. It would be awesome. I'd have to get my super villian license and kill good guys with a horde of them in a pit.

[Phoenixx]

America will invade Colombia now looking for a biological weapon of mass destruction

[Helm]

"A human would just be toast immediately."




Not if the human is a barbarian.

[Phoenixx]

"A human would just be toast immediately."




Not if the human is a barbarian.

Or giant.

[Vizsla]

Jason Head at the University of Toronto, Canada, and colleagues dug up the 60-million-year-old relative of the boa constrictor in a Colombian coal mine (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature07671). Temperature can affect body size, and for the snake to grow to 13 metres long and weigh over 1 tonne, the tropics would have to have been at about 33 °C, 7 °C warmer than today's average.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...er-future.html

Now that's global warming!

[Thanatos]

That's quite an impressive find, good for them. I love the name, "Titanboa."

[The Devil's Sergeant]

I think I'm going to scratch off "the travel back in time 60 million year" on my to-do list.

[Lurker]

This is awesome. Imagine if that type of snake was around now.. It'd be like a Komodo Dragon.. Just.. Worst?

[Kamos]

It would Dwarf a Komodo Dragon my Lurking friend.

[Valentin the II]

It would Dwarf a Komodo Dragon my Lurking friend.

Yes, but fortunately the Komodo dragon also had giant prehistoric relatives.
We could clone them both and have an epic battle of the reptiles!

[gambit]

Cloning should go underway immediately. I need a proper guardian for my prize jewel "The Eye of the Serpent"

edit: DAMN Helm beat me to the conan the barbarian reference.

[thatguy]

Pffft, Crocadile Dundee would take it down.

[ColdFire]

It would be like the creature in GoW2, any of you played that, I can't remember the name.

[Nutsack]

holy thats a huge snake