A terrifying 48-foot, 2,500lb predator that slithered through rainforests 60 million years ago has been brought back to life by the Smithsonian.
In the wake of the dinosaurs, other predators battled for supremacy. Titanoboa was the biggest - a huge snake that would dwarf any anaconda, and which is the undisputed largest in history.
The Smithsonian has recreated the terrifying beast in a new TV show which explores a question that puzzled scientists - why the snake grew so large.
Scientists at the Smithsonian have recreated Titanoboa in a video aimed at exploring why the snake grew to its huge 48-foot length and 2500lb bulk
The skull of Titanoboa was used to reconstruct the fearsome predator
‘This is a find that seems so fantastic that it may appear to be an object of fantasy. A creature that has sprung from a Spielberg-imagined past and yes, it has a name that evokes a giant and mythic monster. It is called Titanoboa,’ David Royale, the Smithsonian Channel's head of programming, announced.
The Smithsonian Channel has created a film that chronicles the discovery of the 48 foot long and 2,500 pound snake that existed more than 60 million years ago - and recreates what the predator might have looked like.
The film has been promoted with a life-size statue which was on show in New York's Grand Central.
Dr. Jonathan Bloch, a paleontologist and curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History was part of the team that unearthed Titanoboa's fossils.
The snake vertebrae were discovered in an area that is believed to have been an ancient rainforest from the Paleocene epoch.
Snake skulls are almost never found as they are extremely fragile and they usually disintegrate.
‘One of the questions we had was why did it get so large and we think that the answer is because it was much warmer in the tropics during that time.
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