Meet Vasuki Indicus — A 45-Foot Prehistoric Serpent From India's Lost World Of Isolation And Collision

Forbes

22-04-2025

India was once a floating island of evolutionary experiments. Fifty million years ago, those ... More experiments were unleashed upon the world. Among them: a now-extinct family of giant snakes.
Spin a globe, and it's easy to be lulled into a false sense of security. The landmasses stay put. But the story is very different on the planet globes were made to represent.
Fifty million years ago, Earth was already ancient, but geologically restless. The continents were in flux. Africa hadn't yet collided with Europe. Australia was still drifting away from Antarctica. And India was a runaway.
Having broken off from the southern supercontinent Gondwana roughly 120 million years ago, the Indian landmass drifted north, moving far faster than most tectonic plates do today. By 50 million years ago, it was on a direct collision course with Asia.
On the Indian tectonic plate, however, life was evolving in isolation, utterly unaware of the looming collision. For tens of millions of years, India functioned like a biological island — cut off from the evolutionary arms race playing out across the rest of the world. Species that lived there were unique, shaped by the constraints and freedoms of geographic solitude.
When India finally collided with Eurasia, it wasn't just rock against rock. It was biology breaching its borders. Species that had evolved in isolation suddenly found pathways into Eurasia — and vice versa. Among the evolutionary cast that spilled forth was a now-extinct family of giant snakes.
Long before boas and pythons began their silent reign, the world belonged to another breed of constrictor. Called the madtsoiids, these large snakes emerged during the age of dinosaurs. Built for the long game, these serpents slithered their way from the Cretaceous right through to the Cenozoic — a stretch of over 80 million years.
Most madtsoiids were giants by today's standards. Some stretched well over 30 feet, making them some of the largest snakes ever known. Like modern boas and pythons, they were powerful constrictors that relied on brute strength, not venom, to crush and subdue their prey. Their diet was anything they could overpower: mammals, reptiles, even small dinosaurs. Fossils of these predators have been unearthed on several continents, from South America and Africa to Australia and India.
This wide distribution suggests that their roots were in the supercontinent Gondwana, before the landmasses split apart and carried madtsoiids to new evolutionary frontiers. The family tree itself is still being pieced together, with genera like Madtsoia, Wonambi, and Sanajeh adding to a tangled, global puzzle.
But even the most enduring lineages fall, and madtsoiids were no exception. They were likely victims of shifting climates, disappearing habitats and competition from faster, more specialized predators. Yet, for millions of years, they were top-tier carnivores, with fossils suggesting a once-flourishing dynasty across much of the prehistoric world.
And in India, their story reached a unique climax with the discovery of Vasuki indicus, a snake that could potentially rival the size of Titanoboa.
Discovered in the lignite mines of Kutch, Western India, Vasuki is a prehistoric heavyweight — a snake estimated to stretch between 11 and 15 meters long, making it the largest madtsoiid ever found. Named after the serpent king from Hindu mythology who coils around Lord Shiva's neck, Vasuki indicus carries a name as rooted in India as the rocks it was pulled from. So far, its fossils have only been uncovered in India.
But its story doesn't end there.
Phylogenetic analysis links Vasuki to Madtsoia pisdurensis, another Indian madtsoiid from the Late Cretaceous, as well as Gigantophis garstini, a massive snake from Late Eocene North Africa. Taken together, the evidence suggests that Vasuki represents a lineage that evolved in isolation while India drifted northward — and may later have spread out, likely dispersing through southern Eurasia into North Africa following the India-Eurasia collision. In evolutionary terms, Vasuki is a relic from a vanished world — a creature forged in solitude and set loose by tectonic chaos.
The answer lies in both its anatomy and the rocks it was found in. The structure of Vasuki's vertebrae suggests it wasn't built for swimming. And at its massive size, it probably wasn't climbing trees.
Instead, it likely lived like today's large pythons and anacondas: slow-moving, ground-dwelling and built for ambush. Its bones bear a striking resemblance to those of modern Python and Malayopython, hinting at a similar lifestyle.
The fossilized bones of Vasuki indicus bear a striking similarity to those of a modern python.
The sediment in which Vasuki was discovered tells the rest of the story. It was buried in a back-swamp marsh. This is a humid, low-lying landscape not unlike the wetlands where today's large constrictors thrive.
During the time Vasuki lived, average temperatures hovered around 82°F, making this region a tropical hothouse ideal for cold-blooded predators. It's in this hothouse that Vasuki would have waited: half-submerged, silent, and patient. And when the time came, it would strike — coiling around its prey and crushing it with sheer muscle, the way giant snakes have done for millions of years.
Giant snakes are nightmare fuel for most people. Where do you think you stand on the science-backed Fear Of Animals Scale?