National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Photo: Biggest Snake Discovered; Was Longer Than a Bus


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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