Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren bulk Bomb. Here the dinosaurs were not the only
Speaker 1: creatures that kicked the buckets sixty five and a half
Speaker 1: million years ago. It was one of the greatest mass
Speaker 1: extinction events of all time when the last t rex died.
Speaker 1: Other reptilian lineages, from the winged pterosaurs to huge aquatic
Speaker 1: relatives of today's monitor lizards, also fell, marking the dawn
Speaker 1: of our current geologic era, the Cenozoic, or the Age
Speaker 1: of Mammals. But don't let this nickname fool you. Although
Speaker 1: mammals diversified like wild in the Cenozoic, Earth wasn't done
Speaker 1: with giant reptiles. Yet. Scientists break the Cnozoic down into
Speaker 1: subdivisions called epox and the first of these, the Paleocene
Speaker 1: saw the rise of Titana boa Sara genensis, a colossal
Speaker 1: snake that makes modern pythons and anaconda's look like spaghetti noodles.
Speaker 1: Species name comes from Sarah Hone, a vast coal mine
Speaker 1: in northern Colombia that produces tens of millions of tons
Speaker 1: of coal every year. Yet coal isn't the only precious
Speaker 1: commodity available there. Working alongside the miners, paleontologists have an
Speaker 1: earth thousands of Cenozoic fossils and Sarah hone, approximately fifty
Speaker 1: eight million years old. These fossils date back to the
Speaker 1: early Paleocene and represent plants similar to bananas and coconuts,
Speaker 1: plus river fish, crocodile like predators, and turtles with shells
Speaker 1: nearly six ft or two meters long, just to name
Speaker 1: a few. These fossils tell us the area was tropical
Speaker 1: and swampy, much like the Amazon River Delta today. Why
Speaker 1: leaved jungle trees would have flanked ancient rivers choked with
Speaker 1: water plants and out in the steaming wilderness. Titanoboa lurked.
Speaker 1: Fossils from twenty eight of these giant snakes have been
Speaker 1: recovered at sarah Holme. Unfortunately, they've yet to locate a
Speaker 1: complete scala ten. Instead, the scientific community has had to
Speaker 1: make do with an assortment of ribs, vertebra, and some
Speaker 1: skull material. Yet even these fines speak volumes. By comparing
Speaker 1: the fossils to the bones of living snakes, we can
Speaker 1: get a pretty good idea of what Titana Boa looked like.
Speaker 1: For example, subtle clues in the vertebra indicate that the
Speaker 1: animal was what's called a bood. It makes sense geographically.
Speaker 1: Boads are a family of snakes usually found in the America's.
Speaker 1: Being non venomous, they tend to kill by constriction. Of
Speaker 1: all the boats alive today. Titana BoA's closest relative might
Speaker 1: be the red tailed boa, a denizen of Central and
Speaker 1: South America that can grow up to thirteen feet or
Speaker 1: four meters long. If you happen to be familiar with
Speaker 1: the film A Clockwork Orange, it's the snake that Alex keeps.
Speaker 1: Titana Boa also invites comparisons to a much larger boad,
Speaker 1: the green anaconda, Weighing up to four hundred and forty
Speaker 1: pounds that's two hundred kilos. This South American serpent is
Speaker 1: the heaviest modern snake. The biggest reliably measured specimen was
Speaker 1: over twenty seven ft or eight meters in length over
Speaker 1: in Asia. The unrelated reticulated python can exceed this figure,
Speaker 1: stretching up to twenty eight feet or eight and a
Speaker 1: half meters long in some cases, but the reddick has
Speaker 1: a sleeker frame. Experts don't think it can rival the
Speaker 1: anaconda's maximum waite. Regardless, neither serpent could have held a
Speaker 1: candle to Titanaboa. Scientists estimate that the Paleocene predator could
Speaker 1: have been forty two to forty seven ft in total
Speaker 1: length about thirteen to fourteen meters, and theoretically it might
Speaker 1: have tipped the scales at one and a quarter tons
Speaker 1: longer than the Tyrannosaurus rex. Titanoboa Sara genensis is the
Speaker 1: biggest snake known to science, living or extinct. So here's
Speaker 1: a question, what would a snake so massive eat? Green
Speaker 1: anaconda's famously eat. Cappabert is the adorable pig sized rodents
Speaker 1: with semi aquatic habits. Smaller cousins of the American alligator
Speaker 1: are also on their menu. When the Smithsonian created a
Speaker 1: life sized Titanaboa sculpture for display as part of its
Speaker 1: Titanaboa Monster Snake Exhibit, in it showed the mighty snake
Speaker 1: wolfing down a crocodilian. Google a picture of this. It
Speaker 1: is the fastest that I've said nope about anything. All
Speaker 1: weak and we live in nope filled times. The following year,
Speaker 1: researchers published a description of Titanaboa as head structure. Anatomically,
Speaker 1: the reptile's teeth and jaws resemble those of modern snakes
Speaker 1: that specialize in eating fish. If Titanaboa followed suit, that
Speaker 1: would make it the only boat on record with a
Speaker 1: fish centric diet. Like the green anaconda, Titanaboa probably spent
Speaker 1: a great deal of time in bodies of water. There,
Speaker 1: it could have more easily lugged its massive body weight
Speaker 1: around and beat the jungles sweltering heat. Researchers have side
Speaker 1: of this animal as evidence of the Paleocen's hot climate.
Speaker 1: Climate scientists think the world was far warmer in the
Speaker 1: early Paleocene than it is today, reptiles may have reaped
Speaker 1: the benefits. For the most part, snakes, lizards, turtles, and
Speaker 1: crocodiles can't generate body heat the way that mammals like
Speaker 1: us do. Instead, they maintain their vital functions by absorbing
Speaker 1: warmth from their environments. So by taking into account titani
Speaker 1: BoA's size, scientists can make an educated guess about the
Speaker 1: environment that it lived in. By some calculations, the very
Speaker 1: existence of such a huge, cold blooded reptile indicates that
Speaker 1: Columbia must have had a mean annual temperature of eighty
Speaker 1: six to ninety three degrees fahrenheit. That's thirty to thirty
Speaker 1: four degrees celsius, and the snake reigned fifty eight million
Speaker 1: years ago. But perhaps dead boards aren't the most reliable gauges.
Speaker 1: We spoke via email with Kale Snyderman, an earth scientist
Speaker 1: at the University of Melbourne in Australia who studies prestoric
Speaker 1: climb and ecosystems. He notes that the Pleistocene, an epoch
Speaker 1: that ended about ten thousand years ago and included Earth's
Speaker 1: most recent ice age, also had its share of big reptiles.
Speaker 1: He said many now extinct reptile species existed in the
Speaker 1: Palistocene that were larger than their living relatives. Those extinct
Speaker 1: species lived at a time when climates pretty much everywhere
Speaker 1: were at least one to three degrees celsius, about two
Speaker 1: to five degrees fahrenheit cooler than today. Consider Varanus priscus,
Speaker 1: a komodo dragon relative the patrolled Australia during the last
Speaker 1: ice Age. At roughly fifteen feet or five and a
Speaker 1: half meters long, it was far bigger than the lizards
Speaker 1: we have today. And speaking of saurians, the biggest getto
Speaker 1: of all time died out in its native New Zealand
Speaker 1: just a few hundred years ago. Snyderman said, neither occurred
Speaker 1: in warm climates by global standards. It could be that
Speaker 1: giant reptiles don't need an oppressively hot planet to survive
Speaker 1: and thrive. After all, petition for mammals might be a
Speaker 1: bigger check on their success. In any case, Titana boa
Speaker 1: is long gone, so is the ice age Komodo dragon
Speaker 1: and the Great New Zealand gecko. Yet their cousins remain
Speaker 1: enriching our world with flashy scales, forked tongues, and adhesive topads.
Speaker 1: This may be an age of mammals, but there are
Speaker 1: still some wonderful reptiles among us. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by Mark Vancini and produced by Tyler Clang. For more
Speaker 1: on this lots of other weighty topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Brain Stuff. It's a production of I
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