James Stewart

For context, the largest anaconda ever accurately measured was a mere 8.5 meters.

For some, this was the stuff of nightmares, but for the scientists who had dedicated decades to this search, it was the stuff of dreams.

They had found the largest snake ever to have been discovered.

While Titanoboa's size was enough to make headlines around the world, what scientists still didn't know was how it lived.

It was incomprehensible what type of world could produce such a monster, and crucially, what did it do to survive?

there was still one part of this monstrous jigsaw puzzle missing, a skull.

As incredible as all those discoveries we've just talked about were, the modeling only really revealed the size of the snake, which is impressive enough.

But to get a full grasp on this almost mythical creature and to further advance their research, they needed its head.

So they once again headed back to the coal mine, which by now to them surely must have felt more like a gold mine.

When they touched back down in Columbia in 2011, expectations were very low.

They'd already hit the mother load.

Surely, surely lightning couldn't strike twice.

Finding a snake vertebrae was hard enough, but finding a snake skull, well, that was a different world.

Unlike our skulls, snake skulls aren't fused together.

Instead, they're connected with tissue, tendons, ligaments, and muscles.

What that means essentially is that when the great beast dies, that connective tissue would simply decompose and all those tiny little bones would just disperse.

This wasn't even a needle in a haystack kind of situation.

They were looking for fragments at best.

And miraculously, that is exactly what they found.

Call it divine intervention, luck, or just knowing what they were looking for this time.