Here be dragons: the million-year journey of the Komodo dragon | Hanneke Meijer

Far from being the special result of insular evolution, Komodo dragons are the last survivors of a group of huge lizards that ranged over much of AustralasiaIn 1910, Lieutenant Jacques Karel Henri van Steyn van Hensbroek was stationed onFloresIsland in eastern Indonesia within the Dutch colonial administration, when he received word of a “land crocodile” of unusually large size living on the nearby island ofKomodo. Intrigued, he set out to Komodo to investigate for himself. He returned with a photo and the skin of the animal, which he sent to Pieter Ouwens, then director of the Java Zoological Museum and Botanical Gardens in Buitenzorg (now Bogor). The animal was not a crocodile of any sort, but a large monitor lizard. Ouwens realised that this animal was new to science and published the first formal description of the animal, which we know now as Komodo dragon,Varanus komodoensis (Ouwens, 1912).Continue reading...

Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - May 17, 2017 Category: Science Authors: Hanneke Meijer Tags: Science Evolution Fossils Biology Source Type: news