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Posted:

29th June, 2009


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Snakes (no longer) alive!

Picture it if you can. You have joined an exploratory expedition to the jungles of South America. Clad in gaitered pants (to keep out the leeches) and bug-proof shirt you are alternately crawling and bashing through dense undergrowth alongside an only-in-South-America, mighty, gushing river. The 91° F (33° C) heat and near 100% humidity is almost killing you; what could possibly live in conditions such as this? After some hours of negotiating the darkness of the jungle, you suddenly find yourself crawling out onto a large riverside clearing. You blink a few times to accustom your eyes to the light; what's that you see? A dome-shaped rock big enough for two or three people to sit on lying on the ground. Then another, and another. Hang on. Are you imagining things? One of them just moved. No, you realize the heat hasn't befuddled your brain when the moving object warily pokes out a turtle head. Giant turtles! A splash and turbulence in the water sends a shiver up your spine as they draw your attention to a number of large crocodiles hanging out in the shallows.

Moments later a subtle movement at the very water's edge catches your eye. Surely it cannot be. There, only a stone's throw away, lies an unmistakable form - a basking snake. But this beast is as long as a large bus and, even lying down, comes up to your hips. This snake of everybody's worst nightmare would barely be able to squeeze through an average doorway.

Welcome to a bona fide Colombian scene from about sixty million years ago. As reported in a February edition of the journal "Nature", paleontologists in Colombia have unearthed fossil vertebrae of a monster snake that grew to about 42 feet (13 meters) in length and would have weighed in at about 2500 pounds (1135 kg) - six times heavier than the very largest recorded living snake! Titanoboa cerrejonensis, as the species has been aptly named, meaning

"giant boa from Cerrejon", reigned as king of the steamy jungle in South America for about ten million years beginning just a few million years after the dinosaurs ceased to be. For its time it was the largest "land" animal on earth. No fossil remains of mammals have been found in the deposits; it probably dined on the crocs and turtles found in abundance in the same rocks. Considerations of the metabolic needs of such a huge "cold-blooded" creature have led scientists to conclude that the mean annual temperature required to keep Titanoba alive would have been 88-91° F (32- 33° C), about 5-6° F warmer than today's equatorial jungles. One can only begin to wonder about Titanoba's lifestyle - how long it lived, how it captured its prey, was able to move, and even how males and females "did it".

The discoveries at Cerrejon have partially filled a gap in scientific knowledge of early Tertiary1 life in South America. Although numerous fossils of mammals and other reptiles had already been found from temperate regions of 65 to 55 million years ago, these were the first vertebrate remains from tropical regions for the same period. As the years pass, our knowledge of earth's history and its passing parade of fabulous, fascinating creatures continues to grow unabated. The bottom line is this: the biblical account of progressive creation over six protracted stages provides merely a thumbnail image of what actually happened. The biblical account is true and trustworthy; paleontology helps to add flesh to the skeleton. And what paleontologists have discovered ought to thrill every believer to the core. God's inventive genius is not limited to today's familiar creatures; the fossil record tells a mind-blowing story of plants and animals that have come, flourished for a while, and then vanished from the scene. When God finally finished His wondrous creative works, what remained is what we see today. May we stand in reverential awe of the One who has done such mighty works.

1The time between dinosaurs and today — the last 65 million years of history

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General accounts of the discovery can be found at,

Largest snake 'as long as a bus', and

Titanoboa - Titanic Boa Fossil From Colombia Is World's Largest Snake

Readers are invited to read the Dawn to Dusk article Fascinating furred creatures of Australia's past


 
 

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