What is the largest historical snake?

With these reports last month of a 49 foot reticulated python being found in Indonesia, I became curious about the fossil records for snakes.

Are the biggest snakes of all time alive now? Or is there some monster from the past? I know that pythons and their relatives are pretty modern snakes, so it would not surprise me to learn that there have never been bigger snakes than today.

On a related note...FORTY NINE FEET??!!...I dont believe it for a minute. I need to find out if that has been confirmed.

Turned out to be around 9m in the end.

There were much larger snakes in Australia before the last Ice Age, I recall. There were some nice fossils found around two years ago, reported in Nature.

It really depends on what the actual relationship between mosasaurs actually is. The last I read the mosasaurs were moved into a single clade with the snakes, Pythonomorpha I think. There were some really big mosasaurs, some species of tylosaurus were in excess of 10 meters long.

Not even that. According to the accounts I found on the web the length was around 6.5 meters (or 21 feet). ' 'I have no idea why the snake has shrunk,' said one keeper when asked about the discrepancy, as the snake lounged on a tree branch inside its cage'.



So how big were they?

Now that I think about it, my question is e tougher to answer than I thought. The closness of Lizards and Snakes is going to make it tough to point to an actual snake that was the biggest.

What interests me is the size of true lizards in the past, such as Megalania prisca, compared to modern monitors such as the Komodo Dragon. More than twice as big for the Megalania. If something like that occured for snakes, then you would be looking at pythons from the past approaching 60 feet and half a ton.

I guess I am wondering if anything over 30 feet has ever been found for a true snake. Not a Mosasaur or Kronosaur. But a land dwelling, python type monster.

Is that the recent fossil find named Monty pythonoides? See http://tinyurl.com/3e34x

You still aren't getting me in the same cage with it if I can help it. That is big enough to kill you with no problems and these things never get tame.

monster.

I think the answer is yes though for some reason 50 seems to stick in my

[SNIP]

Surprise, it turned out to be a lot shorter when remeasured by someone from the Uk's Guardian newspaper - turned out be be between 6.7 and 7 m.

'The most complete skeleton of a fossil snake was found in Upper Cretaceous rocks in Argentina. Most of the skull was preserved as well as a large number of vertebrae and ribs. The six foot skeleton was named Dinilysia patagonica, and it shares many anatomical characteristics with the modern boas and pythons, which are usually considered to be the most primitive of the living snakes. Another fossil snake, Gigantophis, that was found in Egypt, had an estimated length of over fifty feet, and is the largest of all the known snakes. It was also related to the modern boids.'

Afraid that the longest Australian fossil snake I could find reference to was an 8 meter python (Liasis sp.) ran around with that danged big goanna of theirs, probably picking off the young ones of each other from time to time as well as some of those big marsupials.

Regards

Hi people,

the largest snake known was a boa that lived during the Eocene in what is now Argentina (known from just a single vertebra so far). Adriana

'The boine Chubutophis is know from a very large isolated vertebra of Chubutophis grandis, suggesting that it is the largest snake known from the world, larger than the extinct Madtsoia or Gigantophis, and the extant Eunectes or Python.'

The weird thing is, despite its huge size (it was originally mistaken for some kind of dinosaur) it has the proportions typical of a juvenile snake, suggesting it had plenty of growing still to do!

I described Liasis dubudingala (estimated total length 8-10 m) from the Pliocene of Australia, as well as specimens of other large extinct Australian snakes Wonambi and Yurlunggur (Madtsoiidae) and 'Montypythonoides' (Boidae, Pythoninae); Wonambi naracoortensis and Montypythonoides riversleighensis were originally described by M.J. Smith, who is no longer with us (d. 1998).

Upper and lower jaw bones of M. riversleighensis (late Oligocene and Miocene of northern Australia) showed that it was similar and closely related to modern Carpet snakes (the Morelia spilota species group), so it is now included in the extant genus Morelia (Scanlon 2001). 'Montypythonoides' can still be used informally, like Brontosaurus (which is fine as a 'common name' though not as a formal taxon, because Apatosaurus has priority). Some individuals may have been about 6 m, though most are smaller.

Wonambi naracoortensis and species of Yurlunggur are also estimated at about 6 m, though this is pretty uncertain because their skeletons are mostly disarticulated and very incomplete, and we don't know whether they were long, thin snakes (like some pythons) or short and fat (like some other pythons, for example). Madtsoiids (including the '9-10 m' Madtsoia and Gigantophis, e.g. Simpson 1933) are not related to pythons and boas in particular, but split from the common ancestor of all living snakes more than 95 million years ago (madtsoiids and some other, more modern lineages occur together in the oldest known fossil snake assemblage at this time; Rage and Werner 1999, Scanlon 2003).

Dinilysia, mentioned in some earlier posts, was no giant, barely 2 m long, but until recently it was the best-known primitive fossil snake and therefore very important for understanding the evolution. Some nice new partial skeletons have been discovered recently (Caldwell and Albino 2002).

References:

Albino, A.M. 1993. Snakes from the late Paleocene and early Eocene of Patagonia (Argentina): paleoecology and coevolution with mammals. Historical Biology 7: 51-69.

Albino, A.M. 1996. The South American fossil Squamata (Reptilia: Lepidosauria). In G. Arratia (ed.), ‘Contributions of Southern South America to Vertebrate Paleontology'. Münchner Geowissenschaftliche Abhandlungen, Reihe A, 30: 9-27.

Caldwell, M.W., and A. Albino. 2002. Exceptionally preserved skeletons of the Cretaceous snake Dinilysia patagonica Woodward, 1901. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 22(4): 861-866.

Rage, J.-C., and C. Werner. 1999. Mid-Cretaceous (Cenomanian) snakes from Wadi Abu Hashim, Sudan: The earliest snake assemblage. Palaeontologia Africana 35: 85-110.

Scanlon, J.D. 2001. Montypythonoides: the Miocene snake Morelia riversleighensis (Smith and Plane, 1985) and the geographical origin of pythons. Memoirs of the Association of Australasian Palaeontologists 25: 1-35.

Scanlon, J.D., & Lee, M.S.Y., 2000. The Pleistocene serpent Wonambi and the early evolution of snakes. Nature 403: 416-420.

Scanlon, J.D. 2003. The basicranial morphology of madtsoiid snakes (Squamata, Ophidia) and the earliest Alethinophidia (Serpentes). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 23(4): 971-976.

Scanlon, J.D., and B.S. Mackness. 2002. A new giant python from the Pliocene Bluff Downs Local Fauna of northeastern Queensland. Alcheringa 25: 425-437.

Simpson, G.G. 1933. A new fossil snake from the Notostylops beds of Patagonia. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 67:

Hello Are you the far famous Adriana.or do you just look like her!?
But anyway ,my opinion on research or documents that i've collected for the pasts years say there a far more species and individual snakes both from the Eocene and Holocene ,or nowadays that can potentially become bigger than 33 feet or ten meters long ,my family in Indonesia ,had seen and collected material on those Reticulated pythons in the Molucca's who can truly be enormous in size,animals 34 till 38 foot are measured there .Both in Africa where mister Rock Python from Central Africa is a good candidate for the titel too,several accounts from Ivory Coast and both SOuthern parts of Botswana says the p.sebae sebea can reach 33 feet or even 37 feet in length and more than half a ton in weight ,
The famous record from VAn Lierde in despite ,but if true ,maybe 50 footers ,are quite possible in the still remote and great and dense Forest of COngo,and Gabon....

SOuth America's next on!

The original storyfrom KEndall,Java the ZOo,which claimed to have the largest captive snake in the world, as been told and declared by the officials ,we're interesting but rediculous too, the first was that ,the snake had been ill and regurgitated a deer and has shrunken a few meters,really some story !,
The other explanation a very much more realistic is that the Kubu tribe didn't want tot share there God-snake, and did though caught this much smaller one ,as a token but the Original Monster of fourteen meter,of more is still living in the remote Jungles of Sumatra ,along protection from the Tribe,..
i like this version pretty much......(
i read this in Wildlife BBC ,the magazine some years back...

Maybe this supersnake is once being recovered or photographed ,i can't wait....
For the Python really is best to be covered up ,staying in the deep jungles....