Without an SUV in sight.
To me, this is another indication that climate change is natural and constant. To commited global warming alarmists, it's something else. According to paleontologist Jason Head of the University of Toronto Missisauga, senior author of a report on the find in the journal Nature:
Titanoboa's size gives clues about its environment. A snake's size is related to how warm its environment is. The fossils suggest equatorial temperatures in its day were significantly warmer than they are now, during a time when the world as a whole was warmer. So equatorial temperatures apparently rose along with the global levels, in contrast to the competing hypothesis that they would not go up much, Head noted.
"It's a leap" to apply the conditions of the past to modern climate change, Head said. But given that, the finding still has "some potentially scary implications for what we're doing to the climate today," he said.
The finding suggest the equatorial regions will warm up along with the planet, he said.
"We won't have giant snakes, however, because we are removing most of their habitats by development and deforestation" in equatorial regions.
Head's statements seem odd, even gratuitous in light of other information he and another paleontologist provided about the gigantic snake. Not only was it warmer then naturally, but the snake's habit was nothing like today's. According to Head: "While related to modern boa constrictors, it behaved more like an anaconda and spent almost all its time in the water."
Adds Paleontologist Jonathan Bloch of the University of Florida, fish fossils were also found that were related to bonefish and tarpon, and that would have lived in brackish seawater. "That indicates it was a big, riverine system close to the ocean."
And obviously not a habitat that would exist today, whether or not there was development or deforestation.
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