It may have been one of the largest that has ever existed. The fossil of the giant snake seems to confirm this. It is a new ancient species of snake called Vasuki Indicus. And he lived 47 million years ago in India,
The new species reached an estimated length of between 11 and 15 meters. It was part of the now extinct snake family Madtsoiidae. However, it represented a distinct lineage that originated in India. This is what new research published in Scientific Reports says.
The largest in the world
Debajit Datta and Sunil Bajpai of the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee describe a new specimen. Where did the giant snake fossil appear? In a lignite mine in the state of Gujarat, dating to the middle Eocene period.
The new species is named after Vasuki Indicus. This is in honor of the mythical serpent hanging from the neck of the Hindu deity Shiva and in reference to the country of discovery of him. The authors describe 27 mostly well-preserved vertebrae, some of them articulated. They appear to belong to an adult animal.
The vertebrae measure between 37.5 and 62.7 millimeters long and 62.4 and 111.4 millimeters wide. This suggests a wide and cylindrical body. Extrapolating from this, the authors estimate that V. Indicus may have reached between 10.9 and 15.2 meters in length. It is comparable in size to the longest snake that has ever existed, the extinct Titanoboa. But the authors highlight the uncertainty around these estimates.
Primal Anaconda
Additionally, they speculate that the large size of V. indicus made it a slow-moving ambush predator. Something similar to an anaconda. The authors identify V. Indicus as belonging to the family madtsoiidae, which existed for about 100 million years from the Late Cretaceous to the Late Pleistocene. He lived over a wide geographical range that included Africa, Europe and India.
They suggest that V. Indicus represents a lineage of large madtsoiids. These originated in the Indian subcontinent and spread across southern Europe to Africa during the Eocene. It occurred approximately 56 to 34 million years ago.
