More than a century and a half ago, in 1857, thirteen fossil vertebrae discovered near Thessaloniki, in Greece, came into the hands of the English paleontologist Richard Owen. Publishing his description in the quarterly bulletin of the Geological Society of London, Owen identified them as belonging to the largest known viper, which he named Laophis crotaloides.
Owen’s vertebrae were lost, and no tangible evidence of the existence of this huge viper remained until 2014, when a vertebra belonging to the same species was discovered in the same region. Among snakes, the size of the vertebrae is indicative of the animal’s body size; this vertebra confirmed Owen’s appreciation: It is estimated that this snake, which lived during the lower Pliocene, between four and five million years ago, reached three or four meters in length. Today there are longer venomous snakes, such as the king cobra, which lives in Southeast Asia and reaches up to five or six meters. But the king cobra does not weigh more than nine kilos, while for Laophis a weight of up to twenty-six kilos is estimated; it was a very stout viper. The largest current viper, the matabuey or surucucú of Central and South America, is as long as Laophis, but does not exceed twelve kilos in weight.
Snakes are cold-blooded animals; the older they are, the more heat they need to stay active. That is why, today, large snakes live in tropical regions. However, the climate of Greece in the Pliocene was seasonal, with cold winters; it is a mystery how Laophis could survive there. This giant viper lived in grasslands frequented by large animals such as deer and horses, although it is likely that it fed on rodents and other small animals.
Humans never encountered Laophis, but they did meet another large snake, Wonambi, in Australia. Wonambi was the last representative of a now extinct group of constrictor snakes, the madtsoid family. Unlike today’s constrictors, boas and pythons, these snakes were not capable of disengaging their jaws, so they must have fed on smaller prey. Wonambi, at five to six meters in length, had a small head, further limiting the size of its prey. It lived in the Pleistocene, until less than fifty thousand years ago, in South Australia, where it ambushed its prey near waterholes. Their extinction was likely caused, at least in part, by Aborigines, either by hunting or by swidden, slash-and-burn agriculture, which wiped out much of Australia’s forests. Wonambi is the name given by the aborigines of South Australia to the Rainbow Serpent, a mythological being related to life, water and rain; It was said that when the rainbow is seen in the sky, it is the Rainbow Serpent moving from one watering hole to another. Some people consider that the name of the fossil species could not be better chosen, and they propose that it is precisely this extinct snake that originated the myth of the Rainbow Serpent. Although there are plenty of other large snakes in Australia that could have filled that role, and that’s if it’s not just a rainbow mythologize.
Before Wonambi, the madtsoid family reached half the world: South America, Africa, India, Australia and southern Europe. Appearing in the Upper Cretaceous, among its members is what, until a decade ago, was the largest known snake: Gigantophis, between nine and eleven meters long and about seven hundred kilos in weight. Although 30- to 30-foot anacondas and pythons have been reported at times, these are more hunters’ tales than hard scientific data; the maximum sizes verified among current snakes do not reach six meters and one hundred kilos in the case of anacondas, nor do they exceed eight meters and two hundred kilos among pythons. Gigantophis lived during the Eocene, about 36 million years ago, in the region of the Paratethys Sea, in what is now North Africa. It fed on large fish and perhaps primitive amphibian proboscides, such as Moeritherium, the size of a pig. Although some more recent calculations have reduced its length to less than seven meters.
The one that surely reached ten meters in length was the sea snake Palaeophis, which lived during the Eocene, about forty million years ago. This snake had a very high metabolic rate; it was an active predator, like its current relatives, which do not exceed three meters in length.
The largest known snake, Titanoboa, was discovered in 2009; With a length of almost thirteen meters, a thickness of two feet and a weight of more than a ton, it far exceeds Palaeophis, Gigantophis and any other living species. Titanoboa belonged to the boid family, which includes boas and anacondas; It lived in northeastern Colombia during the Paleocene, about 60 million years ago, in a swampy coastal rainforest. It is estimated that the skull, which has not been found complete, was about 40 centimeters in length. Titanoboa spent most of its time in the water, where large crocodiles and turtles also lived. But despite its size, Titanoboa was not a top predator: the structure of its teeth and jaws indicates that it ate primarily fish.
So far the giant snakes accredited in scientific publications. But not all fossils end up described in a scientific journal; some remain in a drawer for years or decades, because they are in very poor condition, or because they are just indistinct fragments, or simply because paleontologists cannot cope… The fact is that, it seems, there are two fragments of fossil vertebrae discovered in Argentina that point to even bigger snakes. The first corresponds to a juvenile individual between five and seven meters long, which as an adult could have reached ten or twelve meters; the second is even larger, and is estimated to have belonged to a snake with a head two feet long and a total length of fifteen to twenty feet. However, none of this is certain until a valid scientific description is published or new, more complete remains are found.
(Germán Fernández, 01/21/2022)
CONSTRUCTION OF GERMAN FERNÁNDEZ:
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Reticular Infiltrator is the first novel in the trilogy The Saga of the Borelians. Do you want to see how it starts? Here you can read the first two chapters.
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