Can a Giant Prehistoric Snake Teach Us About Climate Change?

The snake discovered recently by scientists in Colombia was huge: as long as a school bus and heavy as a small car.

Its remains, now being studied at the University of Florida, are about as long as a T-rex -- which of course makes me start conjuring up wild fantasies about what would happen if they did battle.

Unfortunately for my prehistoric daydreams, the "Titanoboa" -- whose discovery was published in the journal Nature this week -- lived about 6 million years after Tyrannosaurus and the rest of its dinosaur brethren went extinct.

And fortunately for snake-averse humans everywhere, the massive boa hasn't been slithering across the planet for several epochs. But the discovery of its South American remains will help give scientists a better picture of what earth's climate was like during the Paleocene -- the 10 million years or so after the dinosaurs were wiped out.

The answer: It was hot. Really hot.

The snake's gigantic dimensions are a sign that temperatures along the equator were once much warmer than they are now, according to Jonathan Bloch, the University of Florida paleontologist who co-discovered the snake.

Snakes and other cold-blooded animals are limited in body size by the ambient temperature of where they live, Bloch said. So for a snake to grow as large as Titanoboa, it had to be living in an extremely warm environment.

Based on the snake's size, its discoverers were able to calculate that the mean annual temperature at the equator 60 million years ago would have been about 91 degrees Fahrenheit. That's about 10 degrees warmer than it is today.

Think about that: Only 10 degrees warmer, and snakes were able to grow to the size of a school bus. (According to this map of Paleocene climate, Greenland also had palm trees.)

Scientists currently estimate that unless we control global warming emissions, average U.S. temperatures could be 3 to 9 degrees higher by the end of this century.

I'm not suggesting that we should be on the lookout for giant snakes, of course. As The New York Times' Andy Revkin reports, there's a lot of disagreement over exactly what the discovery of Titanoboa means in regard to climate.

But it's a pretty stark rejoinder to the folks who like to argue that earth's climate has been different in the past, so we shouldn't worry too much about it heating it up now.

Yeah, it's been warmer, but it's also been a very different planet from the one on which humans emerged and built our civilization. We've developed our agriculture, our cities and our lives under a fairly narrow set of climate conditions.

If those conditions change radically in a very short time period, outside of what humans are accustomed to, we have no idea how well we'll deal with the consequences. We're potentially seeing climate changes that usually take thousands of years or more squeezed into a few decades.

You only have to look across the Atlantic this week at the havoc a few inches of snow have caused in London to see what happens when we get even a little bit outside of our comfort zone.

I don't know about you, but I'm hoping we don't wind up with a planet where giant snakes would feel right at home. Because that's waaay outside of my comfort zone.

Image: Artist's illustration of Titanoboa cerrejonensi, derived from fossil remains found in Colombia. (Credit: Jason Bourque)

This post originally appeared at NRDC's Switchboard blog.

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Comments

[Tanytarsini]

Again, even if this snake was huge, it was probably both uncommon, and probably heavily parasitized. It may also have been huge to take advantage of large dead animals (scavenging), which may have been common in the productive aquatic and semi-aquatic habitats of the time. With regards to HR 669, there should be limits on the importation of non-native animals, but within reason. First, emphasis should be placed on captive-bred animals in the trade, not wild-caught, to reduce or eliminate pressures on often threatened populations. Second, many of the animals sold are often abused or poorly cared for, especially when people realize how large these animals become. Often these animals are not always docile, and unless you've trained them to eat dead animals (I've trained corn and milk snakes to do this), their temperament can be unpredictable. NOT for children. And third, they should be illegal in areas where they could possibly survive in the wild (e.g., a python or boa will not survive a Michigan winter, and will not affect native animals, so it should be legal here).

[LADawson]

I guess that's my point. They're not trying to impose limits, or make it so captive breeders are somehow encouraged (and actually, the vast majority of boids imported to the US are "farm" raised, not caught directly in the wild), or even trying to reduce pressure on threatened species. They just want to impose a blanket ban so they can ignore all those things entirely. There are very few areas in the US where an African or Asian species of python would survive long enough to establish any kind of population. The Everglades happens to be one of those habitats, and given as the "dire example", but the vast majority of the rest of the country has temperature and drought extremes, not to mention a lack of potential prey, that are not conducive to these animals thriving. I believe a good portion of the reasoning behind the bill is HSUS pushing their agenda of banning all exotic pets, not actually any real scientific reasoning.

[Tanytarsini]

Again, even if this snake was huge, it was probably both uncommon, and probably heavily parasitized. It may also have been huge to take advantage of large dead animals (scavenging), which may have been common in the productive aquatic and semi-aquatic habitats of the time.

With regards to HR 669, there should be limits on the importation of non-native animals, but within reason. First, emphasis should be placed on captive-bred animals in the trade, not wild-caught, to reduce or eliminate pressures on often threatened populations. Second, many of the animals sold are often abused or poorly cared for, especially when people realize how large these animals become. Often these animals are not always docile, and unless you've trained them to eat dead animals (I've trained corn and milk snakes to do this), their temperament can be unpredictable. NOT for children. And third, they should be illegal in areas where they could possibly survive in the wild (e.g., a python or boa will not survive a Michigan winter, and will not affect native animals, so it should be legal here).

[LADawson]

Even if the planet did end up with a climate that could maintain such large snakes, it is unlikely that there would be any at this point. Large snakes are simply at a disadvantage in ever smaller habitats, and even when we aren't actively destroying their habitat, we're hunting them for commercial purposes, or simply eliminating them out of irrational fear. Jesus Rivas, one of the world's most experienced anaconda researchers from Central University of Venezuela, says the largest wild anacondas he has caught are around 18 feet, when we know they're capable of much larger in captivity.

Speaking of irrational fears, Congress is currently working on a bill (H.R.669) to prevent the importation of pythons, anacondas, and boas to the United States. Their poorly researched and ill conceived reasoning being pushed by HSUS and animal rights groups instead of reasoned science, is largely being the fear of having South American or African boids establish feral populations within the United States - even though the vast majority of the country is completely unsuitable habitat for them (The Everglades being a rather unique habitat in the US.) Maybe Congress is not waffling on global warming issues after all, maybe they're actually visionary, and realize the US will become tropical and able to support these animals in the near future.

[twofish]

Just think of fire ants, which are spreading northward with the increasing heat. Things could get very unpleasant for us naked apes, especially if our food crops can't stand the changes. The ones that survive without needing to be pollinated by honeybees, that is. You just don't know from which direction the coup de grace is likely to come.