Ryan Randall plays the bagpipes outside a polling station in Edinburgh, Scotland September 18, 2014. Polling in the referendum on Scottish independence began on Thursday morning, as Scotland votes whether or not to end the 307-year-old union with the rest of the United Kingdom. (Photo by Paul Hackett/Reuters)

Radin the Sunda pangolin hitches a ride on Nita as their keeper looks on. The elusive and nocturnal Sunda pangolin produces only one or two offspring a year and Radin is the third pangolin baby born in Night Safari since 2011. (Photo by Wildlife Reserves Singapore)

An artiste leads a bear as a child sits on it during the first day of a fair organized by GUM departmental store for the upcoming Christmas and New Year celebrations at Moscow's Red Square, November 29, 2014. (Photo by Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)

Titanoboa, meaning "titanic boa," is an extinct genus of snake that lived approximately 60–58 million years ago, during the Paleocene epoch, a 10-million-year period immediately following the dinosaur extinction event. The only known species is Titanoboa cerrejonensis, the largest, longest, and heaviest snake ever discovered, which supplanted the previous record holder, Gigantophis.

A full-scale model of the snake was unveiled at New York City's Grand Central station before the exhibit opens at the Smithsonian in Washington DC.

The pictures were taken by photographer Jorge Farfan and reveal the spiders’ bright colours. The 33-year-old captured the jumping, wolf, and lycosa spiders in a riverside field near his home in La Coruna, Spain. (Photo by Jorge Fardels/Solent News/SIPA Press)