Titanoboa - Titanic Boa Fossil From Colombia Is World's Largest Snake
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 - 11:49
in Paleontology & Archaeology
Excavations in Colombia co-organized by Carlos Jaramillo, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and Jonathan Bloch, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Florida's Florida Museum of Natural History, have unearthed fossil remains of a new snake species they named Titanoboa cerrejonensis. Surrounded by huge trucks extracting coal from Cerrejon, one of the world's largest open-pit mines, researchers discovered fossilized bones of super-sized snakes and their prey, crocodiles and turtles, in the Cerrejon Formation, along with fossilized plant material from the oldest known rainforest in the Americas, which flourished at the site 58-60 million years ago. read more
Read the whole article on Scientific Blogging
More from Scientific Blogging
Related
- World's largest snake discovered in fossilized rainforestWed, 4 Feb 2009, 11:28:56 EST
- Fossil teeth of browsing horse found in Panama Canal earthworksMon, 8 Jun 2009, 11:10:01 EDT
- At 2,500 pounds and 43 feet, prehistoric snake is the largest on recordWed, 4 Feb 2009, 11:28:44 EST
- The first neotropical rainforest was home of the TitanoboaMon, 12 Oct 2009, 16:09:50 EDT
- Prehistoric fossil snake is largest on recordWed, 4 Feb 2009, 15:50:48 EST