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In 2009 researchers in northeastern Colombia discovered fossils of the largest known snake in the world, a prehistoric creature dubbed Titanoboa cerrejonensis (titanoboa) that lived 58 to 60 million years ago and is estimated to have been an astonishing 42.5 feet (13 meters) in length — twice as long as modern pythons and anacondas. (Other researchers have since estimated the length of the largest titanoboas may have reached as much as 50 feet.) The titanoboa quickly became an object of public fascination and was the subject of a sensationally advertised Smithsonian Channel program called Titanoboa: Monster Snake which aired 1 April 2012. An imagined recreation of a titanoboa is also featured at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.: In April 2015, social media users began circulating a photograph of a skeleton purported to be that of a titanoboa: The above image is not a real skeleton of a titanoboa, however, nor is it even a model of one. It's a 2012 sculpture titled Ressort (the French word for 'spring') by the Chinese–French artist Huang Yong Ping, as displayed at Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia:
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