Titanoboa is a genus of extinct giant boid snake that lived during the middle and late Paleocene epoch. Titanoboa was first discovered in the early 2000s by members of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, which–along with students from the University of Florida–recovered 186 fossils of Titanoboa from the Cerrejón coal mines in the La Guajira department of northeastern Colombia. It was named and described in 2009 as Titanoboa cerrejonensis, and lauded as the largest snake ever found at that time. The original type material consisted of thoracic vertebrae and ribs, but later expeditions collected parts of the skull and teeth.