Monster Titanoboa Snake Invades New York (43' Prehistoric Snake Weighed 2,500 lbs.)

Yahoo! News ^ | March 21, 2012 | Claudine Zap

[DogByte6RER]

Monster titanoboa snake invades New York

New York commuters arriving at Grand Central Station were greeted by a monstrous sight: a 48-foot-long, 2,500-pound titanoboa snake.

The good news: It's not alive. Anymore. But the full-scale replica of the reptile -- which made its first appearance at the commuter hub -- is intended, as Smithsonian spokesperson Randall Kremer happily admitted, to "scare the daylights out of people" -- actually has a higher calling: to "communicate science to a lot of people." The scientifically scary-accurate model will go a long way toward that: If this snake slithered by you, it would be waist-high and measure the length of a school bus. Think of it as the T-rex of snakes.

This newly discovered species, known as titanoboa (yes, the words "titan" and "boa" are in there), which lived 65 million years ago, is about to have its close-up. The New York City appearance is promoting an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of Natural History in D.C. opening on March 30, which ties in to a TV special on the Smithsonian Channel called, what else, "Titanoboa: Monster Snake." The two-hour program airs April 1.

Remains of the titanoboa were first discovered in a Colombian coal mine in 2005. One of the researchers specializing in the Paleocene era, the time after the death of the dinosaurs, was Jonathan Bloch. A vertebrate paleontologist from University of Florida's Museum of Natural History, the scientist led multiple expeditions, along with Carlos Jaramillo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. The team collected remains from the mine, which resulted in the find. Together with ancient-snake expert Jason Head of the University of Nebraska, they named the world's largest snake Titanoboa.

[Salamander]

[Paved Paradise]

Great post! I love it. So glad these are no more,though. Creep me out.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks DogByte6RER. And thanks Renfield for the other link in FReepmail. Articles about this have been posted before (it's got a keyword), but it's been a while, so... Keyword: titanoboa Largest snake was 'size of bus' Largest prehistoric snake slithers into record books Ancient fossil find: This snake could eat a cow! Prehistoric titanic-snake jungles laughed at global warming (at 3-5 ... World's Biggest Snake Lived in 1st "Modern" Rain Forest Prehistoric titanic-snake jungles laughed at global warming Rainforest Fossils Demonstrate Dramatic Climate Change No Evolution in 58 Million Years BIGGEST SNAKE PHOTOS: Prehistoric Giant Discovered New thick-shelled turtle species lived with world's biggest snake Ancient Thick-shelled Turtle Discovered in Coal Mine To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[Pharmboy]

[Kickass Conservative]

OK, let me be the first Poster to get this out of the way.

Is that a Titanoboa in your pocket or are you happy to see me?

You may continue...

[Redcitizen]

Gotcha covered. =) Boa versus Anaconda http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boa_vs._Python

[bert]

Strangely believe it, I was Binging for the Cerrejon coal mine in Columbia and there was the reference to Titanoboa about which I had recently read on this thread.

The mine is for being really big and for Titanoboa cerrejonensis fossils

I am currently doing some work for a Canadian firm with a large contract at the Cerrejon mine.

[SunkenCiv]

:’) Great!