New Delhi:

New research from IIT Roorkee suggests that a fossil found from Kutch in Gujarat may belong to the spine of one of the largest snakes ever recorded.

Researchers found 27 “mostly well-preserved” bones that make up the snake’s spine, or vertebrae, in the Panandhro lignite mine, with some connections still intact. They said the vertebrae appeared to be from an adult animal.

The snake belongs to the now extinct family Madtsoiidae and is estimated to be about 11 to 15 meters long. The snake family Madtsoiidae is known to live in a wide geographical area, including Africa, Europe, and India.

The researchers say the snake represents a “unique lineage” that originated in India and then spread to Africa via southern Europe during the Eocene Epoch (about 56 to 34 million years ago). The first ancestors and close relatives of modern mammals are said to have appeared during the Eocene epoch.

The authors date the fossils to the mid-Eocene period, about 47 million years ago.

The researchers named the newly discovered snake species “Vasuki Indicus” (V. Indicus), after the mythical snake around the neck of the Hindu god Shiva and in reference to India, its country of discovery. Their findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The researchers said the vertebrae were between 38 and 62 millimeters long and 62 to 111 millimeters wide, suggesting V. Indicus may have had a broad, cylindrical body.

They concluded that V. Indicus was between 10.9 and 15.2 meters long.

The researchers said it was comparable in size to the extinct Titanoboa, the longest snake known to have ever lived, although they stressed the uncertainty of these estimates. Titanoboa fossils were first discovered in what is now Colombia in the 2000s.

They believe the Indian spotted anaconda’s large size may make it a slow-moving ambush predator, similar to the water anaconda.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)