When was komodo dragon discovered

Dragons can reach 10 feet in length, and weigh as much as pounds. Though it resembles one, the Komodo is not a direct descendant of the dinosaurs. They do, however, share a common ancestor from some million years ago. On Komodo, the dragon is king.

It eats any and all of the other large animals on the island, including wild boar, deer, water buffalo, dogs and goats. If hungry, a Komodo will eat snakes, birds, and even smaller Komodos. Over short distances, the Dragon is capable of pursuit speeds of nearly 20 miles an hour. But for the most part, they hunt with a combination of stealth and power. Concealed in brush, a Komodo will wait until prey -- such as a wild boar -- walks past. Then in a sudden aggressive move, the Dragon will burst from its hiding place.

This is a sort of indirect island effect. The Stegodons got small because they lived on islands, and the lizards evolved to be large enough to eat them. B through H Fossil skull bones. The new research indicates that Komodo dragons were really part of a distribution of related species of really large lizards across the region, including Australia.

In fact, in comparison to some of these other lizards, Komodo dragons are kind of small. In the words of Scott Hocknull, Senior Curator of Geosciences at the Queensland Museum and author of the paper, Australia is a hub for lizard evolution:.

The fossil record shows that over the last four million years Australia has been home to the world's largest lizards, including a five meter giant called Megalania Varanus prisca. Now we can say Australia was also the birthplace of the three-meter Komodo dragon Varanus komodoensis , dispelling the long-held scientific hypothesis that it evolved from a smaller ancestor in isolation on the Indonesian islands. Over the past three years, we've unearthed numerous fossils from eastern Australia dated from , years ago to approximately four million years ago that we now know to be the Komodo dragon.

Hocknull, SA, et al. Molnar, RE, Dragons in the dust: the paleobiology of the giant monitor lizard Megalania. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Price, GJ, et al. Temporal overlap of humans and giant lizards Varanidae; Squamata in Pleistocene Australia. Quaternary Science Reviews — Purwandana et al.

Demographic status of Komodo dragons populations in Komodo National Park. Biological Conservation Sutikna, T, et al. Revised stratigraphy and chronology for Homo floresiensis at Liang Bua in Indonesia. Nature — Here be dragons: the million-year journey of the Komodo dragon. Zombie ammonite discovery is 'snapshot of an unusual moment in deep time' Elsa Panciroli. Read more. On Komodo island, tourists and giant lizards will just have to get along.

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