Organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in collaboration with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the Smithsonian Channel, and the Florida Museum of Natural History, Titanoboa: Monster Snake is an amazing look at a lost world and the incredible creatures that inhabited it.

For the team of paleontologists, finding Titanoboa is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery. This reptile, along with other significant fossils unearthed in the Cerrejón coal mine, provides the first glimpse of the earliest known rainforest.

Until 2004, no one knew what lived in the South American tropics during the Paleocene epoch (65.5 to 56 million years ago). Then a student on a research expedition uncovered something remarkable, the first glimpse of a long-forgotten group of animals, with Titanoboa among them—a 60 million-year-old-beast that was able to crush and devour massive prehistoric crocodiles. What conditions nurtured such a creature? Could those conditions—and snakes of this enormous size ever return?

Using the known correlation between snake body size and environmental temperature as a guide, the team estimates that the average temperature in the rainforest was between 84 and 89.6°F (29-32°C). Modern tropical rainforests range from 79 to 81.5°F (26-27.5°C). This seemingly minor difference was a necessary factor in the evolution of Cerrejón’s massive reptiles, including huge crocodiles and turtles—all far larger than their modern relatives.

Titanoboa: Monster Snake is based on the research of: Carlos Jaramillo, PhD, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute–Panama; Jonathan Bloch, PhD, Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida; Jason Head, PhD, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; P. David Polly, PhD, Indiana University.

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