Titanoboa cerrejonensis.
Illustration: Jason Bourque
If you thought the horror film Anaconda was a terrible premise, I’m afraid to say that you’ve now been proven wrong. It was just released 60 million years to late to be relevant. For the uninitiated, the movie centers around a National Geographic documentary gone horribly wrong thanks to a fantastically huge anaconda. While unlikely these days, geologists recently unearthed a 43 foot (13 m) snake in Columbia that they estimate would have weighed 2,500 pounds (1,140 kg). The warmer climate at the time helped cold-blooded creatures like Titanoboa cerrejonensis attain record dimensions. So with climate change on the horizon, I think we can expect… wait, I think I just had an idea for a movie.
