Giant snakes are a common theme in mythology, horror stories, and even Hollywood movies; Take, for example, Jennifer Lopez’s 1997 movie Ananconda. However, a recent discovery has surprised scientists by revealing that in the past there were even larger snakes than those shown in horror movies.

Titanoboa cerrejonensis was a giant snake that lived in Colombia in the Paleocene epoch, between 60 and 58 million years ago. Like its modern relatives in the boa family, it was not poisonous and killed its prey by engulfing and crushing them until they died from suffocation (“constriction”).

The surprising thing about Titanoboa is its enormous size. You may have thought that the snakes depicted in the Ananconda movie were big, but Titanoboa was even bigger. It is believed to be around 43 feet (15 meters) long, around 3 feet (1 meter) in diameter, and probably weighed more than 1 ton. It is considerably larger than any living species of snake.

It is not entirely clear how Titanoboa managed to grow so large. One possibility is that the warmer weather at the time (the Earth is believed to have averaged about 5 degrees warmer during that period than it is today) may have been a contributing factor.

Another question is what kind of diet Titanoboa would have eaten. Today’s constrictive snakes, probably on a diet of relatively small animals, such as small mammals and birds. Titanoboa, given its enormous size, would have needed more food, so it is believed that its diet included crocodiles and large turtles.