In Northern Africa from Mali till Egypt several accounts of Giant snakes are reported ,of which most of them resembling a lot of characteristics with the Madsoiids ,Giant Ancient predecessors of the Boidae that occured in the Tropics and Sub°tropics for millions of years .
Without exaggerating if these records are genuine and proper calculated , this could go about the largest snakes this earth has ever seen . Some records are dated back to the Roman age, others are from only a decade ago . The latest reports came from Paleontological researches and are made just in the North of Morocco . In 1903 and recently in 1993 some interesting and large vertebrae and a jawbone is found in Mali allegedly from a very large snake . The snake proved to be one of the Madsoiids and is given the name Gigantophis garstinii ( after Garstinii,) it´s great estimated length and both it´s period of occurence still puzzled many scientists as this Giant snake that is calculated between 11,7 to 18 meters long (Scanlon,Bloch,2011,
Gigantophis is known from fragments of jaw found in egypt and could possibly have reached 60 feet (18,3 m). Scientists have calculated, however, the fact that a snake over 50 feet (15m) in length would be unable to support itself and move on land because it´s great weight that maybe collapsing its lung capacity is much discussed even in modern day Anaconda´s or pythons . If it was indeed longer than this, Gigantophis may have been aquatic or semiaquatic like our Green Anaconda has proven to be .
It has been described of predating on predecessors of modern Elephants, the Probodiscians looked a lot like a modern day Rhinoceros . Also comparable were the dimensions of the these two. The times of living distribution of these snakes had to be from the Miocene till late Pleistocene times . Some accounts say it´s it possible that the Gigantophis even survived untill the Holocene as it occured at least till around 40,000 - 25,000 years ago till maybe about 10,000 years . If these are the facts than Gigantophis had plenty of time to develop specialized physical characteristics and under good circumstances much growing to do ,as it could become the greatest snake and terrestrial landvertebrate alive after the Riss period . Still much about these snakes isn´t known like development, age of sex, behaviour and lifespan . The subfossilized bones that are examined prove to be ,that there´s more but more proof and physical material is needed to determine age and growing sequences as feeding behaviour . If eventually bones or prints of dna can show what age these snake are and become ,only than proper calculations are possible . Also the health status and environmental circumstances can tell a lot more of the physical conditions and estimated maximum dimensions of these giant snakes .
Snakes and reptiles of the world, ISBN 987-1-84013-919-8, P334