Titanoboa: The largest snake of the prehistoric world

About 60 million years ago, giant reptiles lived in the swamps of Columbia. This reptile that created terror in the ecosystem is basically a very large snake. Zoologists named it Titanoboa. When the Titanoboa fossil was first discovered in 2009, the reptile was thought to have been 12.8 meters (42 ft) long. This discovery broke the previous record for longest snake discovered, Gigantophis. Before Titanoboa, Gigantophis was considered the longest snake in Earth's history (35 feet). According to the Smithsonian Institution documentary 'Titanoboa: Monster Snake', Titanoboa was closer to 14.6 meters (48 feet) in length. A replica of the Titanoboa was recently displayed at the Smithsonian Museum in the United States. The huge shape in the displayed replica is surprising. 6 million years ago, the average temperature of the Earth was higher than today's temperature, so the length of Titanoboa was also longer than the common anaconda or python snake. Each titanoboa was 10-12 times larger than today's anaconda. The longest extant snake is the green anaconda (Eunectes murinus), which can grow up to 30 feet long.



Now we can discuss the gender of Titanoboa. As is common with snakes, female snakes are larger than male snakes. Since there are not so many titanoboa fossils like dinosaurs, scientists are not ready to say anything about the length of the male and female of this reptile. Presumably, female snakes were larger than males in Titanoboa as well. Habitat



Fossils of Titanoboa have only been found in a coal mine in the South American country of Colombia called Cerrehon. Titanoboas existed on Earth during the Prehistoric Sealandian Period. Considering the geological time line, that period is about 60 million (60 million) years before today and 5 million years after the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction. That is, the Mesozoic Era ended, so there were no dinosaurs on Earth. At that time Titanoboa lived in the rainforest region. Hunting method



Titanoboa was neither venomous nor poisonous. For non-venomous snakes, their usual method of subduing their prey is to twist the prey tightly and suffocate it to death. Titanoboa suffocates its prey by squeezing them with muscles, so that the victim's lungs cannot absorb any oxygen from the air. The snake then drove the victim alive or dead into its stomach, suffering from severe oxygen shortage. Like today's pythons or anacondas, they could extend their mouths ten times longer than their bodies to feed on prey. Since they did not have a venom injection system, instead of sharp teeth, they had strong sharp teeth.



From the partial skull and jawbones, scientists hypothesize that Titanoboa may have had rows of curved teeth in its mouth. Although it only took a few minutes to kill the prey, the time to eat the prey was quite long. Titanoboa's head structure was similar to that of other contractile-expandable anacondas. Their lower jaw extended towards the back of the skull, which allowed their mouth to move more widely. Once the prey was stomached, the strong and strong acid of the stomach would dissolve the prey's flesh and bones. The amount of time it took to digest the prey depended on the size of the prey. In terms of hunting prey, Titanoboa was more comfortable sitting under trees than climbing them. Having a large body also makes it difficult to move at constant speed on the ground, which is not the case with smaller snakes with a slender build. Titanoboa might have been hiding behind a bush. Any prey passing by would pounce on him.



Titanoboa was several times more spontaneous in water than on land. Titanoboa was the name of an iconic terror in the water. Being able to carry his body weight in water allowed him to run several times faster, and expended less energy. Another advantage of being in water was that he could submerge much of his body in the water and dust his prey in the eyes. Titanoboa could also hold its breath underwater for longer periods of time and attack prey from underwater.



Titanoboa's diet was naturally different from that of today's python, the anaconda. Because, there is a big difference between the fauna of 60 million years ago and the fauna of today. To figure out what animals were present in Titanoboa's diet, we need to look at the ecology of South America at the time. According to scientists, their main diet was crocodiles of Cerrejonisuchus, Acherontisuchus and Anthracosuchus genera. Prehistoric crocodiles were fierce, though, and the 35-foot-long Deinosuchus crocodile was capable of devouring dinosaurs. Nevertheless, Titanoboa were able to crush whole crocodiles to death with their bodies. The present-day anaconda-python is also seen swallowing crocodiles whole. In addition to crocodiles, giant tortoises of the genus Carbonemys and Puentemys formed an integral part of the Paleocene ecosystem. Experts speculate that Titanoboa could not have swallowed them whole due to their large size. Their hard shell would have been another barrier. In addition to crushing the turtles' shells, they had to apply a lot of pressure to expel air from their lungs. But compared to the crocodile, the meat was very little. Therefore, Titanoboas were more focused on eating carnivorous crocodiles than turtles.



Apart from crocodiles and turtles, Titanoboa preyed on lungfish and small snakes. Lungfish of that time were about three feet long in each form. Also, because female titanoboas are larger than males, scientists believe that they prey on male titanoboas.



The diet described above is based on the ecosystem of the Serehon region at that time. In addition to aquatic animals, reptiles, different birds or mammals can also live in that environment. However, since no fossils have been found, it is difficult to give any definite information about this.



Scientists have proposed two theories as to the cause of Titanoboa's extinction. The first is global temperature change. The fact that the size of reptiles depends on temperature is clearly evident in science. The higher the temperature of the environment, where the temperature variation is minimal, the larger the reptile will be. The closer one gets to the equator, the more the average temperature increases, the more the seasonal variation decreases. Since the temperature is more stable at the equator, the climate is more suitable for reptiles. Because, various bodily functions such as digestion, blood circulation, and respiration are performed much better at this temperature.



As a result, more energy can be spent on physical growth. The fact that Titanoboa was so long suggests that the average global temperature during the Zealandia period was much higher than today. When the Earth enters the Miocene epoch from the Selandian epoch, the temperature of the earth gradually decreases. Due to the sudden rapid drop in Earth's temperature, problems arise in Titanoboa's metabolism. They could not easily adapt to the ecosystem then. Then more small snakes appeared on Earth, which could carry on their metabolism well at low temperatures. This is how the huge monster disappeared due to the drop in temperature. Many people think that due to being huge and carnivorous, due to severe food shortage, they have been lost in the womb of the universe from the natural competition of the earth. As the average temperature of the environment increases at a higher rate, many scientists believe that large-bodied animals may return to Earth.