This ancient snake in India might have been longer than a school bus and weighed a tonne
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An ancient giant snake in India might have been longer than a school bus and weighed a tonne, researchers reported Thursday.
An ancient giant snake in India might have been longer than a school bus and weighed a tonne, researchers reported Thursday.
Fossils found near a coal mine revealed a snake that stretched an estimated 36 feet (11 metres) to 50 feet (15 metres). It's comparable to the largest known snake at about 42 feet (13 metres) that once lived in what is now Colombia.
The largest living snake today is Asia's reticulated python at 33 feet (10 metres).
The newly discovered behemoth lived 47 million years ago in western India's swampy evergreen forests. It could have weighed up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms), researchers said in the journal Scientific Reports.
They gave it the name Vasuki indicus after “the mythical snake king Vasuki, who wraps around the neck of the Hindu deity Shiva,” said Debajit Datta, a study co-author at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.
This monster snake wasn't especially swift to strike.
“Considering its large size, Vasuki was a slow-moving ambush predator that would subdue its prey through constriction,” Datta said in an email.
