The Queen is not Amused...but I am.

fortheloveofherpetology:

Titanoboa (Titanoboa cerrejonensis)

• In the pantheon of predator, its one of the greatest discoveries since the T-rex: a snake 48 feet long, weighing in at 2,5000 pounds. Uncovered from a treasure trove of fossils in a Columbian coal-mine, this serpent is revealing a lost world of giant creatures
• In the lowland tropics of northern Columbia, 60 miles from the Caribbean coast, Cerrejon is a criss-crossing of roads leading to enormous pits 15 miles in circumference
• 58 million years ago, a few million years after the fall of the dinosaurs, Cerrejon was an immense swampy jungle where everything was hotter, wetter and bigger than it is today
• Today Cerrejon happens to be one of the world’s richest, most important fossil deposits, providing scientists with a unique snapshot of the qeological moment when a new environment was emerging
• After the dinosaurs disappeared the river basin held turtles with shells twice the size of manhole covers and crocodile kin-at least three different species- more than a dozen feet long. And there were seven-foot-long lungfish, two to three times the size of their modern Amazon cousins
• The lord of this jungle was a truly spectacular creature- a snake more than 40 feet long and weighing more than a ton. This giant serpent looked something like a modern-day boa constrictor, but behaved more like today’s water-dwelling anaconda.It was a swamp denizen and a fearsome predator, able to eat any animal that caught its eye

Read the whole story: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/How-Titanoboa-the-40-Foot-Long-Snake-Was-Found.html#ixzz25bi83Xrw

Or watch the video by the Smithsonian: http://www.smithsonianchannel.com/site/sn/show.do?show=140671

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(via askinnyblackman)