A fossil found in 2005 in Gujarat has turned out to be one of the largest snakes to ever exist on Earth. The “Vasuki indicus” – as it has been named by researchers – lived 47 million years ago in the marshy swamps of Kutch. A study of the species, published in Science Reports yesterday, suggests that the snake measured between 36 to nearly 50 feet long.
In size, the Vasuki indicus may have exceeded the now-extinct Titanoboa, the largest known snake that measured 42 feet. It may have weighed as much as 1 tonne or 1,000 kilograms, researchers theorise.
The largest living snake today is Asia’s reticulated python at 33 feet
“Considering its large size, Vasuki was a slow-moving ambush predator that would subdue its prey through constriction like anacondas and pythons,” said Debajit Datta, a postdoctoral researcher in palaeontology at IIT-Roorkee and lead author of the study. “This snake lived in a marshy swamp near the coast at a time when global temperatures were higher than today.”
Researchers gave it the name Vasuki indicus after “the mythical snake king Vasuki” in Hindu mythology, who is often depicted as wrapped around Shiva’s neck.
“It is very symbolic,” said Datta of the naming. Vasuki “is our king. And this here, much like him, is an exceptionally large snake,” he explained.
“It is worth noting that the largest body-length estimates of Vasuki appear to exceed that of Titanoboa, even though the vertebral dimensions of the Indian taxon are slightly smaller than those of Titanoboa,” said researchers.
The discovery
The fossil of Vasuki indicus was discovered by IIT-Roorkee paleontology professor Sunil Bajpai in 2005. He found the remains in a coal mine in Kutch.
At that time, according to Scientific American, Bajpai believed the remains belonged to an already known prehistoric species of crocodile. The fossil laid in his laboratory until 2022, when Datta, who joined the lab that same year, began examining them. The two realised that the fragments belonged to a different species altogether.
“The fossil was found in 2005, but since I have been working on different other fossils, it went on the backburner. In 2022, we started re-examining the fossil. Initially, due to its size, I thought it was of a crocodile. But then we realised it was of a snake and it turned out to be the biggest in its family and possibly one of the biggest and similar to Titanoboa,” Bajpai told Times of India.
(With inputs from AP)
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