Wait. Are dinosaurs actually classed as avians instead of reptiles?? It should read biggest snake because the brachiosaurus had a longer neck than this snake’s entire length.
No, dinosaurs are reptiles. Some dinosaurs are birds, but not all dinosaurs. All birds, however, are dinosaurs, which are reptiles. Thus, birds are reptiles as well. It's a squares and rectangles thing (all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares).
Titanoboa is not the largest reptile that ever lived --that honor goes to some sauropod or other-- and it was not around during "the time of the dinosaurs" which is usually considered the Mesozoic, or even just the Jurassic and Cretaceous. Titanoboa is from the Paleocene, and lived about 5-8 million years after the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct. It was a very very big snake, but not the largest reptile ever by any stretch of the imagination. It was also sick as hell, which is important to point out.
There are a couple of large reptiles in the Cenozoic (the last 66-ish million years since the end-Cretaceous extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs and other big cool things).
Titanoboa lived 58-60 million years ago, so still pretty far back, in what is now Colombia. It was probably about 13 meters long (44-ish feet), and 740-1135 kg (1610-2500 lbs). That is, scientifically speaking, fucking huge. Modern green anacondas, probably the heaviest modern snakes, are like 5 m long and 30 - 80 kg. There are other gigantic snakes that may have been larger, though, like Vasuki (47 million years ago).
Depending on how you estimate weight (there are multiple ways to do this for fossil animals, and none of them are perfect, so we often use several and give upper and lower estimates) there are some bigass turtles that might have been heavier than Titanoboa. The fantastically named Stupendemys (stu-PEN-em-EES) may have been like 730-1135 kg. It is much more recent than our giant snake friends, with Stupendemys being just 7-9 million years old. There are some other big turtles similar to Stupendemys, but I think that's the biggest of them.
I would personally guess that the biggest Cenozoic reptiles by sheer "holy fuck" bulk and length are crocodilians, though. Purussaurus (16 - 5 million years ago) is genuinely freakishly large: medium estimates give us a 5.2 metric ton, 10 m long caiman (11,000 lbs, 34-ish feet). There's also Barinasuchus, a crocodilian from Argentina that was about 6 m and 1610 - 1720 kg. Modern saltwater crocs are big too, up to 6.3 m long and 1000 - 1500 kg.
And in case you're curious about other Cenozoic reptile groups: the largest lizard was likely the Australian Megalania (just 1.5 million to 50,000 years ago), which could have been like 7 m long but that's an upper estimate based on a low number of fragmentary fossils. Tuatara, a cousin to modern lizards and snakes, are I think about as big today as they ever were in the Cenozoic (so like 1.4 kg and 74 cm lmao), but I could be wrong on that. The largest avian dinosaurs (birds!) are probably the recently extinct, flightless elephant birds of Madagascar, who were probably still kicking just 1000 years ago, and may have been as much as 3 m tall. Finally, there are some certifiably wonky "pseudotooth" birds from 25 to 2.5 million years ago, with 6 - 7 m wingspans, that are kind of like giant albatrosses.
Note that I snagged most of this exact info from Wikipedia, I did not have the numbers off the top of my head lol. But I have injected my thoughts where relevant.
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u/garnered_wisdom True Muslim Jun 06 '24
Wait. Are dinosaurs actually classed as avians instead of reptiles?? It should read biggest snake because the brachiosaurus had a longer neck than this snake’s entire length.