New giant lizard:
Komodo cousin ‘a nasty piece of work
Christine Dell’Amore
National Geographic News
A possible new species of giant prehistoric lizard, bigger and badder
than the deadly Komodo dragon, may have stalked the ancient Australian
outback, a new study says.
Three fossilized bones of the mysterious 13-foot-long (4-meter-long)
lizard were collected in 1966 in western Timor island, part of
Indonesia. When study leader Scott Hocknull recently examined the
fossils, he was “astounded” to find that they belonged neither to the
Komodo dragon, the only giant lizard species alive today, nor Megalania,
a 16-foot-long (5-meter-long) extinct monster that’s among the largest
lizards known to have ever lived.
Komodo Dragon |
A nasty piece of work
The ‘tantalizing bones’, which date to the middle of the Pleistocene
epoch (1.8 million to 11,500 years ago), are unique enough that Hocknull
suspects they represent a new species. But only ‘more fossils and time
will tell’, Senior curator of Geosciences at Australia’s Queensland
Museum Hocknull said.
The newfound predator would have lived in open landscapes alongside
giant tortoises, dwarf elephants, and perhaps even the extinct human
ancestral species Homo erectus, Hocknull said. Like the Komodo, the
lizard would have ambushed its prey. “Being a large terrestrial
carnivore”, he said. It would have been quite a nasty piece of work”.
Komodo Dragon born in Australia?
The new analysis also notes that numerous Komodo dragon fossils at
least 300,000 years old have recently been found in Australia.
This is among the evidence that the animals originated, and evolved
into their giant form, on the island continent, then radiated west to
what is now Indonesia, the study says.
And though the new giant lizard has yet to be definitively identified
as a new species, one thing is for sure, Hocknull said. “There were many
more giant lizards in Australia than anybody knew”
Climate accounts for some of his certainty. Australia began to dry up
about eight million years ago, creating a perfect environment for
lizards, Hocknull said. To keep up with the ever increasing sizes of
their prey, prehistoric Australian lizards got beefier over time,
culminating in the titanic Megalania.
But just as Australia’s giant lizards were “on their way up in the
evolutionary stake,” they suddenly died out, Hocknull said. No one knows
how the sole survivor, the Komodo dragon, managed to scrape by in
Indonesia yet disappeared in its Australian birthplace.
“Climate, or humans, or both?” Hocknull said. “The jury will remain
out on this one for a while.” |