{"id":3119,"date":"2009-02-13T08:37:02","date_gmt":"2009-02-13T15:37:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/?p=3119"},"modified":"2009-10-20T02:39:51","modified_gmt":"2009-10-20T09:39:51","slug":"they-found-howards-snake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/they-found-howards-snake\/","title":{"rendered":"They Found Howard’s Snake"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mofosnake\"<\/p>\n

\n

I hate snakes; they are possessed of a cold, utterly merciless cynicism and sophistication, and sense of super-ego that puts them outside the pale of warm-blooded creatures.<\/p>\n

— Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, ca. February 1931<\/em><\/p>\n

“The visionary explorer, Col. P. H. Fawcett, claimed to have seen a 48-foot anaconda, but I don’t believe it.”<\/em><\/p>\n

— L.Sprague de Camp, REHupa #57<\/em><\/p>\n

Novalyne:<\/strong> Well, I haven’t seen any giant snakes, or big-busted naked women frolicking through the West Texas hills lately.<\/p>\n

Robert:<\/strong> Oh, but I have.<\/p>\n

— The Whole Wide World<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

From recent science news<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It was the mother of all snakes, a nightmarish behemoth as long as a school bus and as heavy as a Volkswagen Beetle that ruled the ancient Amazonian rain forest for 2 million years before slithering into nonexistence. Now this monster, which weighed in at 2,500 pounds, has resurfaced in fossils taken from an open-pit coal mine in Colombia, a startling example of growth gone wild.<\/p>\n

“This is amazing. It challenges everything we know about how big a snake can be.””This thing weighs more than a bison and is longer than a city bus,” enthused snake expert Jack Conrad of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who was familiar with the find.<\/p>\n

“It could easily eat something the size of a cow. A human would just be toast immediately.””If it tried to enter my office to eat me, it would have a hard time squeezing through the door,” reckoned paleontologist Jason Head of the University of Toronto Missisauga.<\/p>\n

\"titanoboa\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To give de Camp due credit, he was aware of the Gigantophis, a prehistoric python that was the previous record holder at 30-33 feet. And while boas get very large, they do not have the optimal climate for growth that Titanoboa apparently did — really hot, steaming jungles such as Howard assured us was Satha’s natural habitat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hate snakes; they are possessed of a cold, utterly merciless cynicism and sophistication, and sense of super-ego that puts them outside the pale of warm-blooded creatures. — Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft, ca. February 1931 “The visionary explorer, Col. P. H. Fawcett, claimed to have seen a 48-foot anaconda, but I don’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,33,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-de-camp","category-motifs-in-rehs-work","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3119"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3124,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119\/revisions\/3124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}