In 2002, in a virgin forest in Borneo on the border between Indonesia and Malaysia, local indigenous people caught a reticulated python measuring 14.85 meters long and weighing 447 kg. This is the largest reticulated python ever recorded. The 10-meter "predecessor" shot and killed in 1912 in the World Records Book is much longer.
It is said that ten adult men participated in the capture of the python at that time, and finally sold it to the zoo, and the garden management named it "Osmanthus fragrans". Although the name sounds gentle, it can easily swallow the whole person when it opens its mouth.
However, in April 2007, a foreign website published a statement stating that the world’s longest "Osmanthus fragrans" was 14.85 meters in length. There was a problem because it was measured at the time of " "Osmanthus fragrans" molting is carried out, and the actual length after it is completely molted is about 6.5 to 7 meters.
Seeing that it was almost ready for nearly a century, the prize for finding a 30-foot (9.1-meter) giant snake, which was added to $50,000 in 1980, was missed. Because as early as 55 million years ago, the giant snake that met this requirement on the earth was extinct.
How old was the prehistoric giant snake?
In 2009, an international paleontological scientific expedition from the United States and Panama came to Colombia, South America. In the Cerejón open-pit coal mine in the northeast of the country, the scientific expedition team discovered more than 180 large-sized animal vertebrae The fossil of the rib, the experienced paleontologist immediately judged that it was probably the fossil of the giant snake.
After the scientific expedition team cleaned up all these fossils, they found that they were from 28 different giant snakes, and the images restored by computer simulation also shocked the expert team because of the length of these giant snakes. It is likely to be between 12.8 meters and 13.7 meters (42 feet to 45 feet), with a body diameter of about 1 meter and a weight of about 1.25-1.35 tons. Scientists named this giant snake Titanoboa (Titanoboa).
Who can "rule the king" after the dinosaurs?
is unique,In the Selejon open-pit coal mine, the expedition team also unearthed many fossils of prehistoric crocodiles and giant tortoises that were almost "neighbors" to giant snake fossils. Paleontologists speculated that they were probably prey prey by giant snakes. Judging the age of the excavated fossils through the carbon-14 dating method, it is known that these ancient creatures lived about 55 million years ago.
In other words, these giant snakes are the largest vertebrates living on land after the asteroid hit the earth 65 million years ago and the dinosaurs were extinct. The animals.
And in the relatively short 10 million years after the end of the dinosaur age, that is, from the late Cretaceous to the Paleocene after the extinction of large animals, the land was quickly covered by new giants They dominate and are also cold-blooded animals like snakes, which are extremely demanding on the environment. This has all aroused great research interest among biologists.
How did the prehistoric giant snake appear?
Snake is a kind of temperature-changing animal (cold-blooded animal). It needs a certain temperature to maintain the biological enzymes in its body. Therefore, when the environmental temperature is lower than the appropriate temperature, it needs to hibernate to consume energy and metabolism and other physiological activities Reduce to the lowest level, and then wait for the next spring season to come. This is also very understandable. After all, snakes with extremely high environmental temperature requirements can survive the cold winter without eating or drinking for several months. They can only deal with it by eating a full meal before hibernation and reducing consumption.
However, for a huge python, a higher ambient temperature is needed to support its life activities. Based on parameters such as the length and weight of the Titan Python and the information contained in the fossils, the biological scientists initially restored the environmental temperature at the location of Colombia near the equator 55 million years ago. The average temperature at that time was between 30 degrees Celsius and 34 degrees Celsius (86 Between Fahrenheit and 93.2 Fahrenheit), it is about 5.5-8 degrees higher than it is now.
Due to the high temperature, many cold-blooded animals are very large. For example, before the warmer earth, that is, the Carboniferous before the age of dinosaurs (355 million-295 million years ago), Ten prehistoric behemoths, including carbon tortoises and ancient centipede insects, appear on the earth because of the warm climate and humid air during this period. There are large tropical rainforests and swamps on the land, which are called "giant insects." The growth and reproduction of the plant creates excellent conditions.
In the 10 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs, due to the high ambient temperature, the largest terrestrial vertebrates such as the Titan Python were able to grow. However, snakes weighing more than a ton are indeed beyond the imagination of scientists. Harry W. Greene, a well-known snake expert in the United States, once said that herpetologists argued that snakes could not exceed 12.192 meters (40 feet), but now they have been severely beaten by the Titan Python. Face".
Why was the temperature so high 55 million years ago?
There is a view that an asteroid impact that occurred 65 million years ago caused an asteroid with a diameter of about 10 kilometers hitting the earth (present-day Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico) at a speed of about 40 kilometers per second. The explosion is equivalent to 7 billion times the nuclear explosion of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, which is approximately equal to the power of 100 trillion tons of TNT explosives.
Due to violent explosions and volcanic eruptions and other events, a large amount of dust was thrown into the atmosphere, and more carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere. Months of obscuration caused the food chain to collapse, including dinosaurs. Many of the creatures were extinct.
The end of the dinosaur era also meant that a large number of ecological niches were vacated, providing opportunities for the growth and reproduction of other creatures. And because of the huge amount of carbon dioxide released, plants cannot restore carbon fixation in a short period of time. The strong greenhouse effect has caused the earth to warm up for 10 million years, which is conducive to the evolution of cold-blooded animals to larger bodies.
Of course, this may just be a conclusion taken for granted, because the latest research by geologists from the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Toronto in Canada shows that the extreme heat event ( PETM event) that occurred in the Paleocene-Eocene actually caused dinosaurs The extinct asteroid impact event is not too relevant.
According to the analysis of the sulfur isotope (δ34S) of barite minerals drilled from the Pacific Ocean and the South Atlantic, geologists inferred that,During the PETM period, due to the volcanic eruption and uplift of large igneous rock regions in the ocean, the total amount of carbon dioxide released into the ocean and atmospheric system is almost equal to the sum of man-made emissions from the first industrial revolution to the end of this century. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere The continuous increase directly leads to extreme changes in the earth's carbon cycle and induces a surge in the earth's temperature, leading to the mass extinction of benthic foraminifera, and the expansion of biflagellate on the earth.
According to estimates, during the 20000-50000 years 55 million years ago, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased by approximately 44 trillion tons, an average annual increase of 880 million to 2.2 billion tons, resulting in a warm period lasting about 200,000 years on the earth. , The average temperature soared by about 6 degrees. The tropical rain forests of the earth during this period expanded directly to around 45 degrees north-south latitude, and there was almost no cold zone distribution, and there were basically no permanent glaciers in the Arctic and Arctic Circles.
Due to the increase in temperature, most animals do not adapt to large changes in temperature, and the internal heat cannot be dissipated, and they are extinct. Birds and mammals (heated animals) are gradually turning to smaller ones in order to save better heat dissipation. The direction is evolving. But for members of the cold-blooded family like snakes, the rise in ambient temperature is like a sauna. It’s not too cool, because the rise in ambient temperature is conducive to supporting its life activities, so the body is getting bigger and bigger.
It can be said that the reason why the "dragon clan" can defeat the "orc clan" in this game is mainly because the Paleocene-Eocene extreme heat event inhibited the constant temperature animals from becoming bigger and stronger, so there was the Titan giant The python turned out to be the master of the land during the PETM period.
Of course, there is another way of saying that chaotic ocean currents cause a large amount of flammable ice contained in seabed sediments to be released, and flammable ice is an organic compound that is mainly methane, and its greenhouse effect It is more than 20 times that of carbon dioxide. But no matter which kind, the "dragons" "benefited" the most from this incident. Even today's Amazon green boa, Burmese rock python, Indonesian reticulated python, etc., their habitats have a common feature. , The average annual temperature is higher.
The enlightenment of the extinction of the Titan Anaconda to mankind
Success and failure are also temperature.Snake is a kind of temperature change that is afraid of both heat and cold, and the Titan Python is no exception. Although it dominated for a while during that extreme heat event, it still could not escape the temperature drop or rise and was extinct in a flash.
Because the Titan Python can only maintain the normal activity level of the body when the temperature of the Titan Python is around 30 degrees, it will start to hibernate once the temperature drops below 30 degrees. Once the temperature exceeds the physiological limit, its body metabolism will significantly speed up and finally die of "heatstroke". The giant pythons in these two states will become other carnivorous food dishes, and this "fattening and killing" script is early Lively and vividly deduced in the prehistoric period.
Although the small ice age and extreme heat events occurred occasionally after the extinction of the dinosaurs, the relatively small birds and mammals that survived are more adaptable and seem to start again as if nothing happened. rise rapidly. The ancestors of many existing animals began to appear in the late Paleocene-Eocene extreme heat events. For example, the ancestor of the blue whale, the ancient Pakistani whale (referred to as "bucky whale"), went into the sea at that time, and from From that time on, primates also sounded the charge that occupied the world.
However, I don’t know if you have found a crisis in the game between the “dragon” and the “orcs”? The rise in surface temperature has provided temperature support for the evolution of the Titan Python to large snakes. The "price" paid is about 8.8 to 2.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, totaling 4.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
Nowadays, due to the large-scale burning of fossil fuels by humans, about 36.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide are emitted into nature every year, which is 16-41 times that of 55 million years ago. If calculated according to this emission, it is less than 1200 years. The Paleocene-Eocene extreme heat event will repeat itself again.
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