ABSTRACTS
© Jason Head et al.
© Jason Bourque, University of Florida
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Titanic boa
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cientists have recovered fossils from the largest known snake in the world — a 60-million-year-old South American snake whose estimated size dwarfs today’s anacondas and pythons. Named Titanoboa cerrejonensis (“titanic boa from Cerrejón”) by its discoverers, the size of the non-venomous snake’s vertebrae suggests it weighed 1,135 kilograms (2,500 pounds) and measured 13 meters (42.7 feet) from nose to tail tip. A report describing the find appeared in a February 2009 issue of Nature. “At its greatest width, the snake would have come up to about your hips,” says paleontologist David Polly, an associate professor of geological sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington. Polly identified the position of the fossil vertebrae, which made a size estimate possible. At its thickest point, the diameter of the snake would probably have been 60-75 centimeters (about 23 to 27 inches), according to Polly. “The size is pretty amazing,” he says. “But our team went a step further and asked, how
warm would the Earth have to be to support a body of this size?” Paleontologists have long known of a rough correlation between a time period’s temperature and the size of its poikilotherms (cold-blooded creatures). Poikilotherms need heat from their environment to keep going. As the Earth’s temperature increases, so does the upper size limit on poikilotherms. “There are many ways the anatomy of a species is correlated with its environment on broad scales,” Polly says. “If we understand these correlations better, we will know more about how climate and climate change affect species, as well as how we can infer things about past climates from the morphology of the species that lived back then.” Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute geologist Carlos Jaramillo and University of Florida vertebrate paleontologist Jonathan Bloch discovered the snake fossils in the Cerrejón Coal Mine in northern Colombia. The Nature report’s lead author, paleontologist Jason Head of the University of TorontoMississauga, used information gleaned by his
collaborators to make an estimate of Earth’s temperature 58 to 60 million years ago in an area encompassed by modern-day Colombia. Head estimated a snake of Titanoboa’s size would have required an average annual temperature of 30 to 34 C (86 to 93 F) to survive. By comparison, the average yearly temperature of Cartagena, a Colombian coastal city, is about 83 F. “Tropical ecosystems of South America were surprisingly different 60 million years ago,” says Bloch. “It was a rainforest, like today, but it was even hotter, and the coldblooded reptiles were all substantially larger. The result was, among other things, the largest snakes the world has ever seen ... and hopefully ever will.” Also contributing to the report were Alexander Hastings, Jason Bourque, Fabiany Herrera, and Edwin Cadena, from the University of Florida. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, Carbones del Cerrejon LLC, the Geological Society of America, and the Florida Museum of Natural History.
New Faces at the Crossroads: The World in Central Indiana
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© Jeffrey A. Wolin, Courtesy Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago
Indiana University
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his photo of Philippine immigrant Kristine Verayo Camano is included in a collection of 30 portraits by award-winning photographer Jeffrey Wolin published last year by Indiana University Press. Photographs from the book were also on display when the Indianapolis International Airport opened its new terminal in late 2008. To identify subjects for the portraits, Wolin worked with the International Center of Indianapolis, a nonprofit organization that is also co-publisher of the New Faces book. “I had to give up my Filipino citizenship,” says Camano in the text that accompanies her portrait. “I had really mixed emotions about it, but I’m really glad I made the choice. … Mainly, it’s the right to vote. I’m really excited about that.” Wolin is Ruth N. Halls Professor of photography in the School of Fine Arts at IU Bloomington.