Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. In the humid swamps of what is now Colombia, there was once ...

Beneath the surface of a Colombian coal mine, scientists made a discovery so extraordinary that it rewrote what we know about giant reptiles. In 2009, researchers unearthed fossil remains of an ...

In the lush prehistoric jungles of what is now northern Colombia, a colossal predator once ruled the swampy lowlands. The Titanoboa cerrejonensis, a now-extinct snake species, is believed to be the ...

A mechanical constraint prevented the Titanoboa from lifting more than 1/5 of its body to strike. Counter-intuitively, the world’s largest apex predator was unearthed deep within the Cerrejón coal ...

With Titanoboa, enormous was the rule, not the exception. The Cerrejón team had found what appeared to be an authentic primeval monster. Titanoboa was as long as a school bus and weighed as much as a ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. A massive breakthrough was announced this week by the ...

When people think of prehistoric life, they tend to jump to two behemoth bookends — the towering dinosaurs of the Mesozoic era and then the woolly mammoths of the ice age. But what about the millions ...

CC0 Usage Conditions ApplyClick for more information. Photographing the monster snake is no easy task. Find out how photographer Robert Clark used lighting to bring titanoboa to life. Check to see if ...

CC0 Usage Conditions ApplyClick for more information. Titanoboa was the biggest, baddest boa that ever lived! Take a trip to crocodile heaven and sing a song to the ...

This giant serpent looked something like a modern-day boa constrictor, but behaved more like today’s water-dwelling anaconda. It was a swamp denizen and a fearsome predator, able to eat any animal ...