BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Exhibit: Titanoboa: Monster Snake

DC -- Natl Museum of Natural History -- Exhibit: Titanoboa: Monster Snake:

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Description of Pictures: Titanoboa: Monster Snake
March 30, 2012 – January 6, 2013
From deep underground in a Colombian coal mine, in a layer dating to 65 million years ago, scientists have uncovered remains of the largest snake in the world, Titanoboa cerrejonensis. Measuring 48 feet long and weighing in at 2,500 pounds, this massive predator could crush and devour a crocodile! Fossil plants and animals found at the site reveal the earliest known rain forest, teeming with life and dating to the Paleocene, the lost world that followed the demise of the dinosaurs. Featuring a full-scale model of Titanoboa and clips from a Smithsonian Channel documentary, the exhibition delves into the discovery, reconstruction, and implications of this enormous reptile.
The exhibition is a collaboration between the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), Florida Museum of Natural History, and University of Nebraska-Lincoln; it is circulated by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES).

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SINHTI_120427_15.JPG: What Does a 48-foot Snake Eat? Anything that fits in its mouth! Titanoboa probably ate fish, turtles, and crocodiles, and a single large meal may have lasted the snake for a year. For a 48-foot constrictor, killing its prey wouldn't have taken long. Swallowing and digesting a half ton of blunt-nosed crocodile was another matter. Snakes' upper and lower jaws are attached by long tendons and muscles, allowing them to open their mouths very wide. They can also separate their lower jaws at their "chin" and spread them apart, dramatically increasing their gape. To digest prey, snakes like Titanoboa expand their digestive systems and generate the stomach acids necessary to dissolve bone and tissue. And what ate them? The species of crocodiles Titanoboa feasted on might have preyed on the giant snake's young. New research has revealed widely spaced tooth marks on the shells of giant turtles, hinting at an even larger crocodile -- as long as 40 feet (13 m) -- quite capable of preying on an adult Titanoboa.
2. SINHTI_120427_20.JPG: What Happened to Titanoboa? Good question. Titanoboa fossils were found in a single layer of rock at the Correjon mine. This layer, representing just 200 years of the Paleocene, yielded the remains of 28 individual snakes. Researchers have not yet determined precisely how long the species survived. A rapid global warming event may have driven Titanoboa to extinction. It is also possible that cooling temperatures millions of years after the Paleocene may have caused the snake's demise. As paleontologists continue to explore the South American fossil record, we may someday learn how long these gigantic snakes ruled their world and why they no longer do.
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2012 photos: Equipment this year: My mainstays were the Fuji S100fs, Nikon D7000, and the new Fuji X-S1. I also used an underwater Fuji XP50 and a Nikon D600. The first three cameras all broke this year and had to be repaired. Trips this year: three Civil War Trust conferences (Shepherdstown, WV, Richmond, VA, and Williamsburg, VA), a week-long family reunion cruise of the Caribbean, another week-long family reunion in the Wisconsin Dells (with lots of in-transit time in Ohio and Indiana), and my 7th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including side trips to Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, etc). Ego strokes: I had a picture of Miss DC, Ashley Boalch, published in the Washington Post. I had a photograph of the George Segal San Francisco Holocaust memorial used as the cover of Quebec Francais (issue 165). Not being able to read French, I'm not entirely sure what the article is about but, hey! And I guess what could be considered to be a positive thing, my site is now established enough that spammers have noticed it and I had to block 17,000 file description postings for Viagra and whatever else.. Number of photos taken this year: just below 410,000.
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