Team from IIT Roorkee discover giant ancient snake fossil

Roorkee: A team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, on Friday announced the discovery of an ancient snake species, believed to be one of the largest ever to have roamed the Earth around 47 million years ago.

The snake fossil, named Vasuki Indicus, after Vasuki, the mythical snake often depicted around the neck of the Hindu god Shiva, inhabited the region of present-day Gujarat during the Middle Eocene period.

The 11 to 15-metre-long snake belonged to the now-extinct Madtsoiidae snake family but represented a unique lineage from India, said the team of researchers led by Sunil Bajpai and postdoctoral fellow Debajit Datta.