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Vasuki indicus, the great Indian snake
In a 2024 paper published in Scientific Reports, paleontologists Debajit Dutta and Sunil Bajpai from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, reported the findings of the study of 27 well-preserved fossil vertebrae of a large snake; they estimated the length of the snake to be between 10.9 to 15.2 meters (36-50 ft), making it the largest known snake, likely beating out the famed Titanoboa at 13 meters or about 42ft. The authors named their gigantic discovery in Kutch district in Gujarat, Vasuki indicus.
A warm, lush green epoch
Vasuki indicus lived about 47 million years ago, 19 million years after the dinosaurs went extinct. Geologists call this the Eocene (pronounced EE-ə-seen or EE-oh-seen) Epoch, the dawn of the modern era that includes us, humans. The average temperatures were much higher than today, making this one of the warmest periods of the current era. It was a humid world where the temperature difference between the poles and the equator was relatively low. The world was almost ice-free and was covered in lush green forests.
The continents were more or less in their current positions, although whether the landmass that is India today had collided with Asia or not remains up for debate. Some studies suggest that India collided with Asia around 59 million years ago, while another suggests that the collision happened in two stages – the first happening around 55 million years ago and the second approximately 33 million years ago. Regardless of when it collided, the warm and dense forests of India provided a rich ecosystem that allowed Vasuki indicus to thrive.
Vasuki, the constrictor
Vasuki indicus belongs to a family of Gondwanan snakes called Madtsoiidae. Gondwana (pronounced gon- dwaa-nuh) was an ancient landmass that was fully assembled some 600 million years ago. The remnants of this supercontinent make up South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, Arabia and the Indian subcontinent. Any plant or animal species that originated on the Gondwanan landmass is referred to as a Gondwanan species.
The first known fossils of this family date back to the Late Cretaceous period (100.5-93.9 million years ago), when dinosaurs were still around. They appear to have gone extinct sometime in the Late Pleistocene period (2.5 million to 11,700 years ago).
Like the boas and pythons, the madtsoiidae would kill their prey by constriction. Because snake skeletons are fragile, fossil records of snakes are relatively poor compared to, say, the dinosaurs. Most snake fossils are known from isolated vertebrae.
Discovery of Vasuki indicus
In 2004, 27 vertebrae were discovered in the Panadhro Lignite Mine in Kutch, Gujarat. Initially, they were thought to be the remains of a crocodile. However, based on data from living snakes and existing fossil records, Datta and Bajpai’s research team concluded that these vertebrae belonged to a snake.
“The largest of its vertebrae is 11 cm wide,” says Datta in an article published in Nature. “While high temperatures spur the development of large bodies in snakes and other cold-blooded organisms, current temperatures are rising too fast for these snakes to become as massive as they did in the past,” he added.
The generic term, Vasuki, was named after the divine serpent from Hindu mythology, who is the king of Nagas and is depicted as coiling around Lord Shiva’s neck. The specific name indicus references the country of discovery, India.
What makes Vasuki indicus so special?
This discovery sheds light on the incredible biodiversity of India in the Eocene epoch. For a predator to grow as large as Vasuki indicus did, prey must have been abundant. A discovery of such magnitude provides a renewed interest in the ancient life on the subcontinent. It also reveals how incredibly adaptable animals are to their surroundings. There is still much about this creature that is not known. Was this an apex predator? What was its preferred prey? How did its body function? How did it interact with its environment?
Some scientists are not yet ready to award the title of the biggest known snake over to Vasuki indicus, because, as the authors of the paper state, “It is worth noting that the largest body-length estimates of Vasuki appear to exceed that of Titanoboa, even though the vertebral dimensions of the Indian taxon are slightly smaller than those of Titanoboa. We acknowledge that this observation may be a reflection of the different datasets used to formulate the predictive equations.”
There’s much to be known about this magnificent snake, but its discovery has generated enough excitement that we can expect to see more research that can potentially unearth mysteries of India’s palentological history.