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In fossil-bearing sediments near the city of Tainan in southwestern Taiwan, a single snake vertebra preserved evidence of that vanished reptile.<\/p>\n
Examining the specimen, Cheng-Hsiu Tsai at National Taiwan University (NTU<\/a>) and colleagues documented features showing the bone belonged to a python.<\/p>\n The fossil dates to the Pleistocene, when snakes of that lineage inhabited environments across much of Asia.<\/p>\n Because no python lives on Taiwan today, the find points to a deeper ecological history that the island\u2019s modern wildlife no longer reflects.<\/p>\n When Taiwan changed<\/p>\n The bone came from the Chiting Formation in southwestern Taiwan, a deposit laid down roughly 800,000 to 400,000 years ago.<\/p>\n During that stretch of the Pleistocene, a geologic age marked by repeated ice ages, sea levels rose and fell around the island<\/a>.<\/p>\n Those swings sometimes narrowed the water gap to mainland Asia, opening paths for animals that later disappeared from Taiwan.<\/p>\n A python on Taiwan no longer looks outlandish under those older conditions, even though none lives on the main island now.<\/p>\n A harder food web<\/p>\n Ancient Tainan held more than a big snake, and nearby layers also yielded a 23-foot crocodile<\/a> named Toyotamaphimeia taiwanicus.<\/p>\n A separate jaw showed that a saber-toothed cat<\/a>, likely Homotherium, hunted there as well during that time.<\/p>\n Mammoth remains<\/a> from the same regional fossil record fill out the prey side of that world.<\/p>\n Put together, those animals point to a tougher ecosystem with bigger meals, stronger competition, and more danger at the top.<\/p>\n Reading the bone<\/p>\n Shape mattered as much as size, because python bones carry a stout frame unlike Taiwan\u2019s longer, slimmer native snakes.<\/p>\n The team matched that build to known pythons and ruled out other big snakes by the fossil\u2019s combined traits.<\/p>\n A size model then turned those measurements into a living animal, landing close to 13 feet in total length.<\/p>\n Without that step, the fossil would stay impressive but vague, and the discovery would lose much of its force.<\/p>\n An empty top spot<\/p>\n Modern Taiwan still has more than 50 snake<\/a> species, yet none fills the role this vanished python once held.<\/p>\n Ecologists call those hunters apex predators, animals at the top of a food chain, because little preys on them.<\/p>\n \u201cWe propose that the niche of top predators in the modern ecosystem may have been vacant since the Pleistocene extinction,\u201d wrote Tsai.<\/p>\n If that idea holds, the missing python matters not just as a lost species, but as a missing ecological job.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s smaller reptiles<\/p>\n Taiwan\u2019s biggest native snakes today usually stay below 10 feet, and crocodiles no longer live there at all.<\/p>\n That trimmed-down lineup leaves the island\u2019s largest living reptiles in a much narrower size range than before.<\/p>\n \u201cThis fossil represents the largest and most unexpected fossil snake from Taiwan,\u201d wrote Tsai describing the find.<\/p>\n The contrast works because Taiwan\u2019s living reptiles look ordinary until one fossil reveals how much has been stripped away.<\/p>\n Why islands change<\/p>\n Island fossils often expose losses that living wildlife can no longer show, especially after big predators vanish for thousands of years.<\/p>\n A wider faunal turnover, the replacement of one animal community by another, can hide that damage behind ordinary-looking modern nature.<\/p>\n Tsai also worked on island extinctions<\/a> more broadly, in research linking vanished giants to major ecological losses.<\/p>\n The python fits that broader pattern, because modern Taiwan can look complete while missing some of its oldest roles.<\/p>\n The bone\u2019s journey<\/p>\n Before scientists studied it, the fossil sat in the hands of Li-Ren Hou, a longtime collector in Tainan.<\/p>\n Hou donated the specimen to Tsai\u2019s NTU lab, where permanent curation turned a single find into usable evidence.<\/p>\n That path matters because fossils often lose scientific value when their origin, handling, or ownership stays murky.<\/p>\n Here, a clear chain of custody kept the story anchored to place, time, and a real research collection.<\/p>\n What comes next<\/p>\n Python fossils from the later part of the ice age are scarce worldwide, which makes a Taiwan<\/a> specimen more than local news.<\/p>\n Comparable finds from that broad period are known from only a few places, including India and Eritrea in East Africa.<\/p>\n More bones from the same formation could show whether giant pythons were common residents, rare visitors, or something between.<\/p>\n That is why the fossil matters now: one snake has already changed the island\u2019s history, and it may only be a start.<\/p>\n A different Taiwan<\/p>\n Seen across these fossils, ancient Taiwan supported larger hunters, heavier prey, and a food web that no longer survives.<\/p>\n That does not prove every ancient niche stayed empty forever, but it does show how much modern nature can hide.<\/p>\n The study is published in Historical Biology<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have identified the first fossil evidence that a giant python more than 13 feet long once lived…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-526779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}