I was a stereotype when I was five. I had an undying fascination with all things dinosaur. I forced my parents to read me books with complicated species names like Eustreptospondylus and Piatnitzkysaurus. I was an avid fan of Land of the Lost and dreamed of someone finding a real, live dinosaur, somehow left over from prehistoric days.
It wasn't until Jurassic Park came along well into my adulthood that I realized how very unpleasant an encounter with a real, live dinosaur would, of course, probably be. But not until this morning did it occur to me that if there were once giant lizards, and later giant tigers and wool-covered elephants, well, weren't there probably giant, um, snakes? Oh yes indeed, it seems there were.
The largest prehistoric snake fossil ever found was found this week in Columbia. Measuring approximately 42 feet long and weighing in at over 500 pounds, the newly dubbed "titan boa" lived in ancient rain forests hotter than they are now by at least 5 degrees Fahrenheit. They estimate the heat by the snake's size, supposing that a cold-blooded animal needed more heat than we have now to get so much bigger than the snakes we see now. Scientists, ever-eager to toss us mortals material our tiny minds can grasp, point out that this fossil snake is larger than the animatronic snake that tried to eat Jennifer Lopez in the film "Anaconda."
So the next time your kids are dancing with Barney, remind them that these days, dinosaurs are just pretend. And that's a very good thing!
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Image: animalreview.wordpress.com
