Prehistoric Megafauna - Tumblr Posts
Illustrations Show Size Difference Between Prehistoric Animals and Modern Descendants
I just realized that apparently I never shared this series here on Tumblr??
I call it Living Paintings, as they are recreations of extinct animals that some artists actually saw and painted from memory, a long time ago.
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How did the snakes we know now get so small compared to the titan boa
that question is actually a little backwards- only once in their entire 65+ million year history have snakes EVER achieved the massive size of the titanoboa, and a couple of unlikely factors had to align absolutely perfectly for it to happen!
first, there had to be an open niche for a gigantic superpredator without any competition at all to allow the tiny existing snakes time to evolve into the role- and this happens less often than you think! an opening this size requires major ecosystem disruption to produce, but luckily (?) for titanoboa, its stars aligned somewhat literally when a meteor descended from the heavens to wipe out the competition and murder not only the nonavian dinosaurs, but most of the other contenders that could have quickly evolved to fill the newly-vacant superpredator niche had they not all died in a horrific fiery world-ending catastrophe!
“oh shit! my ecological niche!” <art src: Donald E Davis>
(snakes, by the way, survived due to their ability to burrow and hibernate through the worst of it. when in doubt, snooze it out!)
and second, it turns out that in order to produce a 50-foot snake, you need a LOT of heat and humidity- and the titanoboa evolved during a period in earth’s history when the environment was much warmer and wetter than it is now. just an absolute sauna. (with giant snakes in it, watch out)
these two factors combined to produce a once-in-a-hundred-million-years event and allowed the titanoboa to evolve and reign absolutely supreme over its humid rainforest environment... until the climate crashed again just a couple million years later and brought an abrupt and chilly end to the age of the giant snakes.
au revoir, you beautiful bastard.
<art src: DarrenPepper>