Crikey, a croc-eating snake!

This is something that the late, beloved, possibly crazy Steve Irwin would have been very interested in, methinks: an ancient 45-foot long snake that ate—you guessed it—crocodiles!

The Titanoboa, which means Titanic Boa, lived 60 to 58 million years ago, after the extinction of the dinosaurs. Given that the ancient ancestors of the crocodile, the Cerrejonisuchus improcerus, were only six to seven feet long, they were pretty much pre-packaged and snack-sized for the big snake. The ancient crocs, of course, would have been both predator and prey, notes Florida Museum paleontologist Jonathan Bloch.

Fossils of both reptiles were often discovered side by side, indicating a direct food chain link. Of course, snakes continue to eat crocodiles today; Amazonian anacondas, for example, have eaten caimans before. But this enormous snake, the size of a school bus, would have been something to see. Jason Head, a paleontologist at the University of Toronto Mississauga, says it was “the biggest snake the world has ever known.”

The snake’s fossils have been discovered in northern Colombia. Giant sea turtles and crocodile relatives were also found in the same site, which makes you wonder what the world must’ve been like—maybe something like Big World, Level 4 of Mario 3?

Researchers estimate that it weighed a massive 2500 pounds. The largest snakes of its kind could have grown up to 50 feet in length, and the species was about three feet in diameter in its thickest midsection. Even though it wasn’t a venomous snake, it surely wasn’t something any sentient being would want to cross. Studies also indicate that the snake probably spent its life in the water—if not for most of the time, then permanently. Since the only other fossils found around the snakes were other aquatic animals and not land invertebrates, researchers are confident that the snake made the water his primary home.

So why was the titanoba so big in the first place? Scientists say it was all due to climate. That many million years ago, the climate of South America was still a rainforest but even hotter, creating an optimal situation for massive growth for reptiles, who require the heat to thrive. In order to support the snake, the paleontologists estimate that temperatures had to average up to 93 degrees Fahrenheit. So does this mean that if we kept snakes in similar temperatures they, too, would become monstrous in size? Food for thought, anyway.