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Large Snakes

First Neotropical Rainforest Was Home Of The Titanoboa -- World's Biggest Snake
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 230441.htm

Plant megafossils from Cerrejon coal mine in Colombia look much like modern rainforest plants. (Credit: Courtesy of PNAS)

ScienceDaily (Oct. 13, 2009) — Smithsonian researchers working in Colombia's Cerrejón coal mine have unearthed the first megafossil evidence of a neotropical rainforest. Titanoboa, the world's biggest snake, lived in this forest 58 million years ago at temperatures 3-5 C warmer than in rainforests today, indicating that rainforests flourished during warm periods.

"Modern neotropical rainforests, with their palms and spectacular flowering-plant diversity, seem to have come into existence in the Paleocene epoch, shortly after the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago," said Carlos Jaramillo, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. "Pollen evidence tells us that forests before the mass extinction were quite different from our fossil rainforest at Cerrejón. We find new plant families, large, smooth-margined leaves and a three-tiered structure of forest floor, understory shrubs and high canopy."

Historically, good rock exposures and concentrated efforts by paleontologists to understand the evolution of neotropical rainforests—one of the most awe-inspiring assemblages of plant and animal life on the planet—have been lacking. "The Cerrejón mining operation is the first clear window we have to see back in time to the Paleocene, when the neotropical rainforest was first developing," said Scott Wing, a paleontologist from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Some of the more than 2,000 fossil leaves, including the compound leaves and pods of plants in the bean family and leaves of the hibiscus family are among the oldest, reliable evidence of these groups. This was the first time that the plant families Araceae, Arecaceae, Fabaceae, Lauraceae, Malvaceae and Menispermaceae, which are still among the most common neotropical rainforest families, all occurred together.

Many newcomers to modern rainforests remark that the leaves all look the same, a reasonable observation given that most have smooth margins and long "drip-tips" thought to prevent water from accumulating on the leaf surface.

S. Joseph Wright, senior scientist at STRI, has noted that all of the areas in the world today with average yearly temperatures greater than 28 C are too dry to support tropical rainforests. If tropical temperatures increase by 3 C by the end of this century as predicted in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "We're going to have a novel climate where it is very hot and very wet. How tropical forest species will respond to this novel climate, we don't know," said Wright.

Based on leaf shape and the size of the cold-blooded Titanoboa, Cerrejón rainforest existed at temperatures up to 30-32 C and rainfall averages exceeded 2500 mm per year.

But Titanoboa's rainforest was not as diverse as modern rainforests. Comparison of the diversity of this fossil flora to modern Amazon forest diversity and to the diversity of pollen from other Paleocene rainforests revealed that there are fewer species at Cerrejón than one would expect. Insect-feeding damage on leaves indicated that they could have been eaten by herbivores with a very general diet rather than insects specific to certain host plants.

"We were very surprised by the low plant diversity of this rainforest. Either we are looking at a new type of plant community that still hadn't had time to diversify, or this forest was still recovering from the events that caused the mass extinction 65 million years ago," said Wing. "Our next steps are to collect and analyze more sites of the same age from elsewhere in Colombia to see if the patterns at Cerrejón hold, and study additional sites that bracket the Cretaceous mass extinction, in order to really understand how the phenomenal interactions that typify modern rainforests came to be."

This work is scheduled to be published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of Oct. 12-16.
 
They ate crocs for breakfast...


Ancient Crocodile Relative Likely Food Source for Titanoboa, Largest Snake Ever Known
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 154408.htm

On Feb. 1, 2010, Alex Hastings, a graduate student at UF's Florida Museum of Natural History, measures a jaw fragment from an ancient relative of crocodiles that lived 60 million years ago. The fossil came from the same site in Colombia as fossils of Titanoboa, indicating the crocodyliform was a likely food source for the giant snake. (Credit: Photo by Jeff Gage/University of Florida)

ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2010) — A 60-million-year-old relative of crocodiles described recently by University of Florida researchers in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology was likely a food source for Titanoboa, the largest snake the world has ever known.

Working with scientists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, paleontologists from the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus found fossils of the new species of ancient crocodile in the Cerrejon Formation in northern Colombia. The site, one of the world's largest open-pit coal mines, also yielded skeletons of the giant, boa constrictor-like Titanoboa, which measured up to 45 feet long. The study is the first report of a fossil crocodyliform from the same site.

"We're starting to flesh out the fauna that we have from there," said lead author Alex Hastings, a graduate student at the Florida Museum and UF's department of geological sciences.

Specimens used in the study show the new species, named Cerrejonisuchus improcerus, grew only 6 to 7 feet long, making it easy prey for Titanoboa. Its scientific name means small crocodile from Cerrejon.

The findings follow another study by researchers at UF and the Smithsonian providing the first reliable evidence of what Neotropical rainforests looked like 60 million years ago.

While Cerrejonisuchus is not directly related to modern crocodiles, it played an important role in the early evolution of South American rainforest ecosystems, said Jonathan Bloch, a Florida Museum vertebrate paleontologist and associate curator.

"Clearly this new fossil would have been part of the food-chain, both as predator and prey," said Bloch, who co-led the fossil-hunting expeditions to Cerrejon with Smithsonian paleobotanist Carlos Jaramillo. "Giant snakes today are known to eat crocodylians, and it is not much of a reach to say Cerrejonisuchus would have been a frequent meal for Titanoboa. Fossils of the two are often found side-by-side."

The concept of ancient crocodyliforms as snake food has its parallel in the modern world, as anacondas have been documented consuming caimans in the Amazon. Given the ancient reptile's size, it would have been no competition for Titanoboa, Hastings said.

Cerrejonisuchus improcerus is the smallest member of Dyrosauridae, a family of now-extinct crocodyliforms. Dyrosaurids typically grew to about 18 feet and had long tweezer-like snouts for eating fish. By contrast, the Cerrejon species had a much shorter snout, indicating a more generalized diet that likely included frogs, lizards, small snakes and possibly mammals.

"It seems that Cerrejonisuchus managed to tap into a feeding resource that wasn't useful to other larger crocodyliforms," Hastings said.

The study reveals an unexpected level of diversity among dyrosaurids, said Christopher A. Brochu, a paleontologist and associate professor in geosciences at the University of Iowa.

"This diversity is more evolutionarily complex than expected," said Brochu, who was not involved in the study. "A limited number of snout shapes evolved repeatedly in many groups of crocodyliforms, and it appears that the same is true for dyrosaurids. Certain head shapes arose in different dyrosaurid lineages independently."

Dyrosaurids split from the branch that eventually produced the modern families of alligators and crocodiles more than 100 million years ago. They survived the major extinction event that killed the dinosaurs but eventually went extinct about 45 million years ago. Most dyrosaurids have been found in Africa, but they occur throughout the world. Prior to this finding, only one other dyrosaurid skull from South America had been described.

Scientists previously believed dyrosaurids diversified in the Paleogene, the period of time following the mass extinction of dinosaurs, but this study reinforces the view that much of their diversity was in place before the mass extinction event, Brochu said. Somehow dyrosaurids survived the mass extinction intact while other marine reptile groups, such as mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, died out completely.

The crocodyliform's diminutive size came as a surprise, Hastings said, especially considering the giant reptiles that lived during the Late Cretaceous. The fossil record also points to the possibility of other types of ancient crocodyliforms inhabiting the same ecosystem. "In a lot of these tropical, diverse ecosystems in which crocodyliforms can thrive, you often see multiple snout types," he said. "They tend to start speciating into different groups."

Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by University of Florida.
 
Vid at link.

Scientists peer inside a python to see swallowed rat
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_ ... 487548.stm

By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News

Take a trip through the python's internal system

Scientists have used the latest imaging techniques to look inside a python that had just swallowed a rat whole.

The resulting footage is part of a project using hi-tech scanning methods to explore animals' anatomy.

It took 132 hours for snake to fully digest the rat, the scientists said. Their work has revealed other strange insights into python digestion.

They presented the study at the Society for Experimental Biology's annual meeting in Prague, Czech Republic.

The researchers carried out a computer tomography or CT scan of an anaesthetised 5kg Burmese python one hour after it had devoured the rat whole.
Burmese python (Image: MR Research Center, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark) The MRI study revealed how the python's organs altered as it digested its meal

They also used a technique called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study the creature's internal organs.

By using contrast agents, the scientists were able to highlight specific organs and make them appear in different colours.

A series of MRI images revealed the gradual disappearance of the rat's body. At the same time, the snake's intestine expanded, its gall bladder shrank and its heart increased in volume by 25%.

The researchers, Henrik Lauridsen and Kasper Hansen, both from Aarhus University in Denmark, explained that the increase in the size of the snake's heart was probably associated with the energy it needed to digest its meal.

"It's a sit and wait predator," explained Mr Lauridsen. "It fasts for months and then eats a really large meal.

"It can eat the equivalent of up to 50% of its own bodyweight, and in order to get the energy out of the meal, it has to restart the intestinal system very fast."
Alligator (Image: MR Research Center, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark) Contrast agents allow the researchers to highlight specific internal organs

The researchers, who are both based at the university's Department of Zoophysiology and the MR Research Centre at Aarhus, say that their approach has several advantages over the "subjective and sometimes misleading" interpretations of dissections.

Dissection induces changes, explained Dr Hansen. "For example, after opening the dense bone of a turtle shell, the lungs will collapse due to the change in pressure.

"And to use these techniques you don't have to kill the animal," he added. "We can do this using live animals and revisit the results over and over again."

The images, they say, will be valuable tools in future studies of animal anatomy for both research and education.

They have produced similarly spectacular images of several other species, including frogs, alligators, turtles, swamp eels and bearded dragons.
 
US announces ban on giant snakes

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/bre ... ing70.html

Tue, Jan 17, 2012

The United States announced a ban on Burmese pythons today, after years of unsuccessful efforts to eradicate the giant snakes from the Everglades National Park in Florida.

US interior secretary Ken Salazar, who has championed the ban, said it would take effect within about 60 days and make it illegal to import the snakes or transport them across state lines.

Mr Salazar announced the measure at a news conference at a flood control pumping station in a corner of the Everglades just outside Miami, where he was joined by Florida senator Ben Nelson and two senior park and Florida Wildlife Commission officials as they held aloft a recently captured four-meter python.

"The action were taking today is a milestone in the protection of the Everglades," Mr Salazar said.

Biologists say most pythons in the Everglades are thought to have been released there by their owners once they realised that the "pets" can grow from just 30cm (12ins) to 3.6 metres (12ft) long within their first two years of life.

In addition to the Burmese python, which has become one of the most notorious invasive species in US history, the ban affects the yellow anaconda and northern and southern African pythons.

Invasive species in subtropical parts of Florida include dragon-like Nile Monitor lizards and raccoon-sized African rats.

But Burmese pythons, which are native to southeast Asia, have become the stuff of legend in the Everglades since they were first sighted in the wildlife haven in the mid-1970s.

With their razor-sharp teeth, they have been known to eat practically anything that moves in the park, from small mammals to large wading birds. Last year, a 4.8-metre (15ft 7in) Burmese was found with a huge bulge from a recently consumed 34kg deer.

Compounding eradication problems, however, the bone-crushing snakes have also bred in the wild in the savanna and steamy swamps of the Everglades.

One of the creatures was aggressive enough to try devouring a 1.8 metre (6ft) alligator in the park in 2005. The alligator was believed to have been dead already and the snake also died trying to digest it.
 
With a 'Giant snakes' thread this one seems a bit of an underachiever.
 
oldrover said:
With a 'Giant snakes' thread this one seems a bit of an underachiever.

Yeah, I wqas wondering about putting it on the Snakes thread bit there are a few pythons here.
 
Just adapt the title to 'Large illegal Snakes' that'd give it more pizzazz.
 
Just to show that there are examples in the fossil record...

The giant snake that stalked the Earth

A recently discovered prehistoric monster snake provides answers about the past - and raises questions for the future.

Around 58 million years ago a monstrous snake slithered out of the swampy jungles of South America and began a reign of terror.

Weighing more than a ton and measuring 14m (approximately 50 feet) the giant reptile could swallow a whole crocodile without showing a bulge. But a few years ago scientists never even knew it existed.

"Never in your wildest dreams do you expect to find a 14-metre boa constrictor. The biggest snake today is half that size," says Dr Carlos Jaramillo, a scientist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and part of the team that made the discovery.

'World of lost reptiles'

Thought to be a distant relative of the anaconda and boa constrictor, the snake - named "titanoboa" - was not venomous. Instead it crushed its prey with the constricting force of 400lbs per sq inch - the equivalent of lying under the weight of one and a half times the Brooklyn Bridge.

The fossils were exposed by excavation at the massive Cerrejon open-face coal mine in northern Colombia. In 2002 scientists had discovered at that site the remains of a tropical rainforest from the Palaeocene epoch - perhaps the planet's first.

As well as fossilised leaves and plants, they unearthed reptiles so big they defied imagination.

"What we found was a giant world of lost reptiles - turtles the size of a kitchen table and the biggest crocodiles in the history of fossil records," says Jonathan Bloch, an expert in vertebrate evolution at the University of Florida.

They also found the vertebrae of a colossal snake.

"After the extinction of the dinosaurs, this animal, the titanoboa, was the largest predator on the surface of the planet for at least 10 million years," says Dr Bloch. "This was a major animal in any sense of the imagination."
Search for skulls

But scientists needed the snake's skull to get a full picture of how it looked, what food it ate and how it might be related to modern species. Last year a team set out to find it, with little expectation of success. Because the bones of a snake's skull are so fragile, few survive.

"Unlike our skulls, snake skulls aren't fused together. Instead they're connected with tissue," says Dr Jason Head, a snake specialist from the University of Nebraska.

"When the animal dies the connective tissue decomposes and all the individual bones are generally dispersed. They're very thin and fragile too and often get destroyed. Because titanoboa is so big and the skull bones are so large, it's one of the few snakes that do make it into the fossil record."

To their amazement the team recovered the remains of three skulls from which the reptile could be accurately reconstructed for the first time.

From that, they were able to get a better sense of how titanoboa lived and looked. A life-sized replica is now on display the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in Washington, and will begin a nationwide tour in 2013.

Aside from the excitement of discovering a new and enormous species of snake, the reptile can tell scientists a lot about the history of the earth's climate - and offer a glimpse of the possible effects of global warming today.

Snakes are unable to regulate their own temperature and depend on external heat to survive.

"We think the titanoboa became this large because it was much warmer on the equator after the dinosaurs died 60 million years ago," says Dr Bloch. "We think that's why reptiles in general were larger.

That ability to thrive in a warm climate could be relevant in the event that global temperatures rise according to the projections of climate scientists, Dr Bloch adds.

"It's evidence that eco-systems can thrive at temperatures of the levels that are being projected over the next one or two hundred years."

Return of titanoboa?

But the climate changes that produced titanoboa took millions of years. Scientists are less certain about the effects of sudden temperature change.

"Biology is amazingly adaptable. Changing climates and changing continents are the fuel of evolution. But things that happen very quickly can result in the types of change we might not view very positively," says Dr Bloch.

As well as being warmer, CO2 levels were also 50% higher during the period of the Cerrejon rainforest.

"One big lesson we are learning from the fossils in Cerrejon is that tropical plants and the eco-system in general have the ability to cope with high temperatures and high levels of CO2, another major concern with the current trend of global warming," says Dr Jaramillo.

"Perhaps the plants and animals of the tropics today already have the genetic ability to cope with global warming."

Does that mean the titanoboa could one day return?

"As the temperature increases you have the probability they will come back," says Dr Jaramillo. "But it takes geological time to develop a new species. It could take a million years - but perhaps they will!"

BBC Source
 
There have been alleged sightings of snakes larger than the one described in the above article. Colonel Fawcett claimed to have shot a 62-foot long snake in Brazil in 1907, for example.
 
Jerry_B said:
There have been alleged sightings of snakes larger than the one described in the above article. Colonel Fawcett claimed to have shot a 62-foot long snake in Brazil in 1907, for example.

Indeed, he disappeared in the Brazilian jungles in 1925. Eaten by a snake?
 
I hate to say this but I can't think of another way to put it, it's not the length that surprises me as much as the girth.
 
Indeed, he disappeared in the Brazilian jungles in 1925. Eaten by a snake?


Didn't someone confess to having eaten him because he'd upset them.
 
ramonmercado said:
oldrover said:
Indeed, he disappeared in the Brazilian jungles in 1925. Eaten by a snake?


Didn't someone confess to having eaten him because he'd upset them.

No, they had an upset stomach afterwards.

Must...resist...toilet jokes about 'Fawcett'...
 
Mythopoeika said:
Must...resist...toilet jokes about 'Fawcett'...
No, just let yourself go!

(and relax...) 8)
 
You see, this is exactly the sort of thing I was concerned about.
 
disgruntledgoth said:
I would love to have a pet Titanboa lol

...for all of five minutes before it ate you...
 
Mythopoeika said:
disgruntledgoth said:
I would love to have a pet Titanboa lol

...for all of five minutes before it ate you...

our shoulders make it pretty difficult for a snake of any size to eat you, even if a snake was 30 feet, it would be physically able to hold a human, if it started eating you head first (as the usually do, apart from the occasional daft one I've seen who starts in the middle, or with a prey item in reverse) it would get to your shoulders, and not be able to open it's mouth wider, once it's mouth is already open, so, unless you're unlucky and it starts feet first, and assuming you manage to survive the constriction (trick is to relax as much as possible) then you might just get spat out
 
Don't big snakes sometimes wrap round their prey to break up those nasty indigestible bones? Problem solved!
I think a 50 ft Titanoboa would certainly be able to swallow a human.
 
Hang on a minute don't snakes suffocate their prey by shrinking down to the size of their chests when they breathe out and hold it there, rather than actually crushing them. Hence the name constrictor rather than crusher.
 
Apparently it is a bit of both. Squeezing someone/something tight enough so that is not able to breathe in again is going to exert some considerable pressure on the chest cavity so I would not be surprised if a couple of ribs were cracked at least. Dislocating a shoulder would probably be possible as well depending on where the coils are to make that bit go down easier as well.
 
Big constricors, who have trouble working their jaws over human shoulders, have been known to crish human scapulas together in 'concertina' effect in order to swallow them.
 
I was hoping you'd pop along and settle this. I didn't even know that anyone had been eaten by a Boa Constrictor. Any chance you can point me to the source of this.
 
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