- Who
- Titanoboa cerrejonensis
- Where
- Colombia (La Guajira )
The largest snake ever known to have lived is Titanoboa cerrejonensis, a prehistoric species of boa known from the fossils of 28 specimens found in the coal mines of Cerrejón, in La Guajira, Colombia. Their discovery had been made by an international scientific expedition led by Florida University vertebrate palaeontologist Dr Jonathan Bloch and was formally announced in early 2009. The fossils revealed that the aptly-named Titanoboa, which lived 58-60 million years ago during the Palaeocene Epoch, reached a maximum length of 12-15 m, measured approximately 1 m across at the thickest portion of its body, and weighed roughly 1135 kg. These measurements dwarf those of both the reticulated python, the world’s longest living species of snake, and the anaconda, the world’s heaviest living species of snake.
