Fossil hunters have discovered what could be the largest snake ever

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 determined the ancient snake, identified as Vasuki indicusgrew about longer than a school bus.

A few biologists from the India Institute of Technology Roorkee an article published in Scientific reports this spring 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 they spread by 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 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, the only direct competitor of Vasuki indicus in honor of “largest snake ever” is Titanoboa cerrejonensis, a water snake that lived in the Middle and Late Pleistocene. The first Titanoboa fossils we have been discovered in present-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, watch the Smithsonian film Titanoboa: Monster snake.)

“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.

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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.