Snakes. Why did it have to be giant snakes? | PLOS Paleo Community
Snakes are beautiful and bizarre animals. Limbless vertebrates, they have been around for more than 150 million years, and occupy almost every ecological role possible, including living under the sea! Over geological time, they have come in all sorts of shapes and sizes (typically still sausage-ish shaped), and have a unique evolutionary history. One particular group of snakes, Madtsoiidae, used to be widely distributed around the world back in the Cretaceous when the dinosaurs ruled. They are now extinct, with a range of around 100 million years, making them one of the longest lived lineages ever. Geographic distribution of Madtsoiidae, plotted on a present-day map (Rio and Mannion, 2017) The first named madtsoiid was back in 1901, and called Gigantophis garstini. It was discovered from 40 million year old rocks in very, very ancient Egypt. From the name, you can probably tell that this was one hefty snake, bigger than an anaconda and making most modern species look like something
Source: Snakes. Why did it have to be giant snakes? | PLOS Paleo Community