Dinosaurs & Prehistory - Other prehistoric animals - Titanoboa - Snakes - Paleocene - Extinct animals
According to scientific estimates, how long did Titanoboa live?
Correct!
Titanoboa cerrejonensis was a gigantic snake that lived in what is now Colombia about 58 to 60 million years ago in the Paleocene. Based on their huge fossil vertebrae, scientists estimated their body length to be around 13 meters and their mass to be around 1,135 kilograms. This makes Titanoboa the largest or longest known snake in Earth's history. The fossils were found in the Cerrejón Formation in northern Colombia. At that time there was a hot, humid tropical rainforest with rivers and swamps. The same ecosystem was also home to giant turtles and crocodile-like reptiles. Titanoboa was not an oversized venomous snake. Their anatomy places them within the boids, i.e. the wider relatives of boas. Their enormous body size was reconstructed from the ratio between the size of fossil vertebrae and the body dimensions of modern snakes - the 13 meters is therefore a scientific estimate and not a directly measured length of a complete skeleton. In 2024, another gigantic fossil snake from India, Vasuki indicus, was described, the estimated size of which rivals that of Titanoboa. Nature still calls Titanoboa the longest known snake at around 13 meters.
Titanoboa was estimated to be approximately 13 meters long based on fossil vertebrae.
