March 29, 2012
Titanoboa, the 48-Foot Monster Snake, Slithers Into the Natural History Museum
The model of Titanoboa will be on view at the Natural History museum starting tomorrow. Photo by James Di Loreto/Smithsonian Institution
It’s alive!
Well, not really. But you might have to do a double-take at the 48-foot long replica of Titanoboa, on view starting tomorrow at the Natural History Museum. After a head-turning debut at New York’s Grand Central Station last week, the giant snake has taken up residence in D.C. The exhibition, “Titanaboa: Monster Snake” charts the incredible 2002 discovery of the snake’s fossils in the coal mines of Cerrejón, Colombia. The discovery itself is just as huge as the snake; Jonathan Bloch, one of the paleontologists on the team, explains, “After the extinction of the dinosaurs, this animal was literally the largest predator on the surface of the planet for at least ten million years.”
If that’s not enough to pique your interest, we’ve compiled a required reading/viewing list of all things monstrous and reptilian:
- Smithsonian magazine’s cover story on the discovery of the 65 million-year-old Titanoboa fossils.
- Around the Mall’s blog post on the making of the giant model. (With a timelapse video on how the model was made)
- A sneak preview for the Smithsonian Channel documentary, premiering on Sunday, April 1.
- An interview with scientist Carlos Jaramillo, a paleobotanist who was part of the team that uncovered Titanoboa
- And, just for fun, a hypothetical showdown between T-Rex and Titanoboa.
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The Titanoboa must have been an amazing sight. The world is full of cool mysteries like THE ICE GORILLA, cool new sci fi book that I’m hoping will get the greenlight and go into production to become a movie.
Hooray for THE ICE GORILLA and Titanoboa.
I watched the TitanoBoa movie last night, it was amazing. She is amazing. Being a reptile hobbies t at the moment, it was quite intense to imagine seeing a snake just that big. Hey Just curious… Will TitanoBoa’s recreation ever come visit Chicago, Illinois?? I bet that the Field Museum, or the Museum of Science and Industry would LOVE to have a visit from her!! As would I! Thank you, Jenny Cain.
I just saw the model last week in the museum of Natural History. Based on the diameter( by the way the model is much larger than the 30 inch they say the actual snake was) and the length of the model, 2,500 lbs would be a little on the light side. My calculation would put the weight at more than 4,600 lbs. Do the math people. Kent Shelton Ariz