Comments on: The Origin of the Komodo Dragon

By: Here Be (Komodo) Dragons! | The Wandering Herpetologist

Here Be (Komodo) Dragons! | The Wandering Herpetologist — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 17:27:44 +0000

[...] The dragons were once thought to be from a smaller ancestor that lived on the Indonesian Islands and over time experienced the “island effect” of growing larger. The “island effect” of growing larger is thought to occur when the quality of food on an island is lower than the mainland and the animal grows larger in size to have a gastrointestinal tract large enough to process all available nutrients in the food. The giant tortoises of the Galápagos are an example of organisms that have evolved to such a large size due to “island effect”. An alternative hypothesis suggested that the dragons’ size evolved to allow them to prey on the dwarf elephants that once populated the islands. In 2009 scientists discovered fossils of giant lizards in Australia that date from 300,000 to 4 million years ago. It has been determined that the fossils are Komodo dragons. It appears the dragons evolved their large size 0n Australia and then colonized the Indonesian Islands. It is still unknown why they went extinct in Australia. Read Article [...]

By: Weekly PLoS ONE News and Blog Round-Up « everyONE – the PLoS ONE community blog

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:25:00 +0000

[...] Another piece of paleontology research published on Wednesday came from an international team led by Scott Hocknull at the University of Queensland, described in an article entitled, Dragon’s Paradise Lost: Palaeobiogeography, Evolution and Extinction of the Largest-Ever Terrestrial Lizards (Varanidae). New fossil evidence shows that the world’s largest living lizard, the Komodo Dragon (Varanus komodoensis), which grows up to three metres in length, is most likely to have evolved in Australia and then dispersed westward to Indonesia. Three further fossil specimens from the island of Timor represent a new (unnamed) species of giant monitor lizard, which was even larger than the Komodo Dragon, although Hocknull notes that more specimens are needed before the species can be formally described. Some of the online coverage of the study included: ABC News, the World Today podcast and the Surprising Science blog. [...]

By: scott shubert

scott shubert — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:29:23 +0000

How long will it be until this stupid theory is overthrown in the same way this one overthrew two previous stupid theories?

By: Science… sort of

Science… sort of — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:12:17 +0000

[...] There used to be really big scary reptiles back in the day, Patrick tells us [...]