Giant boid snake from the Palaeocene neotropics reveals hotter past equatorial temperatures

The largest extant snakes live in the tropics of South America and southeast Asia where high temperatures facilitate the evolution of large body sizes among air-breathing animals whose body temperatures are dependant on ambient environmental temperatures (poikilothermy). Very little is known about ancient tropical terrestrial ecosystems, limiting our understanding of the evolution of giant snakes and their relationship to climate in the past....