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News from Colombia, Smithsonian paleontologists are onto a huge trove of fossils, and boy are they finding some monsters. The most awesome: a giant snake as big as a schoolbus:

Indeed, it had an average length of 43 feet — far longer than any of today’s pythons or anacondas — and it weighed 2,500 pounds, more than a small car. Its diet included giant turtles and crocodiles

And not just one snake–28 of them, all between 42 and 49 feet. Dios mio.

They are finding these snakes on a mountain, so you can’t quite call it Snakes on a Plain. But we fit that joke in anyway, didn’t we! There are more beasties too:
The team’s work has already turned up giant crocodiles and freshwater turtles that weighed 300 pounds. There are also hundreds of fossils of leaves so perfectly preserved that the paleontologists can easily make out the veins and ridges.

Tags: dinosaurs, fossils, paleontology, smithsonian, snakes, snakes on a plain