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scientist in India have let on the fossilized remains of an ancientsnakethat may be the big known snake to ever go .
The supersized serpent may have measured 50 feet ( 15 meters ) long — surpassing the current record book - holderTitanoboaby around 6.5 pes ( 2 m ) .
The newfound snake was much longer than any living snake, including this green anaconda.
The newly distinguish species , namedVasuki Indicus , take its genus name from the mythical top executive of serpents in Hinduism , which is often describe wrapped around the neck of one of Hinduism ’s chief deities , Shiva .
A total of 27 fossilized vertebrae from the enormous snake were unearthed at the Panandhro Lignite Mine in Gujarat state . The fossils date to around 47 million years ago , during the Eocene epoch ( 56 million to 33.9 million years ago ) . The authors retrieve the fossils came from a fully grow adult .
The squad estimated the ophidian ’s full body duration using the width of the Snake River ’s spine bones and found thatV. indicuscould have ranged from between 36 pes and 50 feet ( 11 and 15 molarity ) long , although they recognise there may be a possible error associated with their estimate . They print their findings Thursday ( April 18 ) in the journalScientific Reports .
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The researchers used two methods to come up with possible mountain range forV. indicus ' organic structure length . Both used present - twenty-four hours snake in the grass to determine the relationship between the width of a snake ’s vertebrae and its length — but they differed in the datasets they used .
One used data from advanced snakes in the Boidae family , which includes boas and pythons and contains the largest snakes alive today . The other dataset used all types of living snakes .
" Vasukibelongs to an extinct family of snakes , distantly related to pythons and anacondas , and so when you ’re using live Snake to estimate consistency distance , there may be uncertainties , " study Centennial State - authorDebajit Datta , a postdoctoral research worker at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee , told Live Science .
The upper oddment of their estimations would makeV. indicuseven swelled thanTitanoboa cerrejonensis , the biggest snake ever see until now , which lived around 60 million years ago and was excavate in 2002 in northeastern Colombia .
V. indicusbelongs to a group of snakes know as Madtsoiidae , which first appeared in the late Cretaceous period ( 100.5 million to 66 million yr ago ) , in South America , Africa , India , Australia and Southern Europe .
look at the sites where ribs would attach to the vertebra , the researchers thinkV. indicushad a broad , cylindrical body and mostly lived on land . Aquatic snakes , in comparability , tend to have very vapid , streamline bodies .
Due to its large size , the researchers say the snake was probable an lying in wait predator , subordinate its quarry by constriction , similar to modern - day anaconda .
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The scientist calculate thatV. indicusthrived in a warm mood with an norm of around 82 degree Fahrenheit ( 28 degrees Anders Celsius ) — importantly warm than the present twenty-four hour period .
" There are still many things we do n’t have a go at it about Vasuki . We do n’t know about its muscles , how it used them or what it ate , " Datta said .
Sunil Bajpai , study co - generator and a vertebrate paleontologist at IIT Roorkee , said the squad hope to have the fossil analyzed for their carbon and oxygen depicted object , which may reveal more about the snake ’s diet .
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