VIDEO: Titanoboa – Largest Snake to Ever Exist

Meet the Titanoboa – the largest known snake!

Fortunately, it no longer exist in this day an age, as it is a prehistoric creature.

The Titanoboa lived somewhere around 58 to 60 million years ago.

According to thoughtco.com, Titanoboa was a true monster among prehistoric snakes, about the size and weight of an extremely elongated school bus (and presumably a lot less fun to ride). On the following slides, you’ll discover 10 unique facts about this 50-foot-long, 2,000-pound menace of the Paleocene epoch.

After the K/T Extinction, 65 million years ago, wiped out all the dinosaurs, it took a few million years for terrestrial life on earth to replenish itself.

Appearing during the Paleocene epoch, Titanoboa (along with an assortment of prehistoric turtles and crocodiles) was one of the first plus-sized reptiles to reclaim the ecological niches left open by the demise of dinosaurs and marine reptiles at the end of the Cretaceous period (the mammals of the Paleocene epoch, meanwhile, had yet to evolve to giant sizes).

You might assume that the “titanic boa” hunted like a modern-day boa constrictor, wrapping itself around its prey’s torso and squeezing tight until its victim suffocated.

In fact, though, Titanoboa probably attacked its prey in more dramatic fashion, slithering close to its blissfully unaware lunch while half-submerged in the water, and then, with a sudden leap, snapping its massive jaws around its unfortunate victim’s windpipe.

How the mighty have fallen. Until recently, the 33-foot-long, thousand-pound Gigantophis was hailed as the king of all snakes, until its reputation was eclipsed by the even bigger Titanoboa, which predated it by a whopping 40 million years.

Not that Gigantophis was any less dangerous to prey than its much bigger predecessor; for example, paleontologists believe this African snake made a regular meal of the distant elephant ancestor Moeritherium. (See a gallery of prehistoric snake pictures)

Sure, Titanoboa was big, but let’s not get carried away: it was barely twice as long and four times as heavy as the modern-day Giant Anaconda, the largest specimens of which measure about 25 feet from head to tail and weigh in the neighborhood of 500 pounds.

Compared to most modern snakes, though, Titanoboa was a true behemoth: for example, the average cobra or rattlesnake only weighs about 10 pounds, and can easily fit into a small suitcase.

When a snake is as long and as heavy as Titanoboa, the rules of physics and biology don’t afford the luxury of evenly spacing out that weight along the entire length of its body.

Titanoboa was noticeably thicker toward the center of its trunk than it was at either end, and after it chowed down on a giant turtle or crocodile, its paunch was presumaly swollen enough to make it look like an inexpertly rolled glob of prehistoric Play-Doh.

The swamps of early Paleocene South America aren’t the ideal destination for faint-hearted time travelers.

The remains of the one-ton snapping turtle Carbonemys have been found in the same vicinity as the fossils of Titanoboa, and it’s not inconceivable that these two giant reptiles mixed it up occasionally, if only by accident or when they were feeling especially touchy (a scenario that’s explored in more depth in Titanoboa vs. Carbonemys: Who Wins?)