National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Monday, November 23, 2009

Photo: Biggest Snake Discovered; Was Longer Than a Bus


Email to a Friend	<< Back to Full Story

The world's biggest snake lounges in the tropics in an artist's reconstruction of a 60-million-year-old fossil, first described in a February 2009 study.

The anaconda-like reptile was "longer than a city bus and … heavier than a car," scientists say. The gigantic fossil could also shed light on once and future climate change—for a snake to grow so large, temperatures in the tropics would have to be higher than they are today.

Picture by Jason Bourque