Scientists have discovered huge remains of a snake in the Indian state of Gujarat: it can now be recognized as the largest in the history of the world.
The length of the reptile could reach fifteen meters (50 feet), while its weight was almost a ton. The find was given a symbolic name: Vasuki indicus (in honor of the enormous snake Vasuki from Indian myths).
The ancient snake was part of Madtsoiidae, an extinct group of mainly Gondwanan land snakes with a time range spanning about 100 million years, from the late Cretaceous to the late Pleistocene.
“The Madtsoiidae family existed for about 100 million years, from the late Cretaceous to the late Pleistocene, and lived across a wide geographic range including Africa, Europe and India,” said Roorkee paleontologists Debajit Datta and Sunil Bajpai of the Indian Institute of Technology.
“Vasuki indicus represents a genus of large madtsoiids that originated in the Indian subcontinent and spread to Africa via southern Europe during the Eocene, approximately 56 to 34 million years ago.”
“This is comparable in size to the longest known snake that ever lived, the extinct Titanoboa,” the researchers said.
“The large size of Vasuki indicus made it a slow-moving ambush predator, similar to an anaconda.”
“Biogeographical considerations, taken together with the interrelationship with other Indian and North African madtsoiids, suggest that Vasuki indicus represents a relic lineage that originated in India,” she added.
“The subsequent collision between India and Asia 50 million years ago led to the intercontinental spread of this lineage from the subcontinent to North Africa via southern Eurasia.”
“Recovering additional material and new species, including large-sized forms, may provide further insights into madtsoiid systematics and biogeography.”
The research was published in the magazine Scientific Reports.
