|
|
Post by Melanie on Aug 21, 2006 12:26:09 GMT
Megalania (Varanus prisca) was an extinct giant monitor lizard. It was one of the megafauna that roamed southern Australia, and appears to have become extinct around 40,000 years ago. Once thought to belong to a distinct genus called Megalania prisca (which means “ancient giant butcher”), it is now recognized as a species in the genus Varanus, which encompases all monitor lizards. The first aboriginal settlers of Australia would certainly have encountered living Megalania.
[edit]
Size of the Megalania
Megalania was a giant lizard, reaching lengths of 7 to 10 metres (about 21 to 30 feet) and over 600 kg. Megalania was the largest terrestrial lizard that ever lived, and was a fearsome predator, with heavily built limbs and body and a solid skull full of short blade-teeth. Due to its size and similarities to the Komodo Dragon, a relationship between the two species has been suggested. In reality however Megalania's closest relative is the perentie, Australia's largest lizard.
[edit]
Live Megalania
There have been numerous reports and rumors of living Megalania in Australia, and occasionally New Guinea, as recently as the mid 1990s. Australian cryptozoologist Rex Gilroy has stated that Megalania is still alive today, and it is only a matter of time until one comes in. Aside from stories and eyewitness accounts, the only evidence that Megalania might still be alive today is plaster casts of possible Megalania footprints that Gilroy made in 1979. An outsized monitor lizard had walked across a plowed field. It is plausible, as many kinds of animals that have died out or are much less common elsewhere (monotremes, marsupials, etc.) thrive in Australia. However, there have been no serious studies taken to determine whether the Megalania is alive today, and it is still considered to be extinct.
from Wikipedia
|
|
|
|
Post by Melanie on Aug 21, 2006 12:45:44 GMT
aka Goanna Pictures   |
|
|
|
Post by sordes on Aug 26, 2006 17:13:32 GMT
In fact megalania was much smaller, only about 5,5m and 400 at maximum, the early estimates were much to high.
Analyses of their bones and comparisons with modern monitors showed that Megalania reached its enormous size not by fast-growing, but by long-growing. In fact it didn´t grow faster than other monitors, but in contrast to them, it didn´t stopped the fast juvenile growth after a few years. Megalania had a fast growth untill an age of about 17 years, after that age its growth increased, but was still comparably high. Interestingly the same was shown for the giant crocodile Sarcosuchus, which had also very a very long "juvenile" growth.
Megalania was very probably a late maturing animal whose populations consisted mainly of subadult specimens.
|
|
|
|
Post by Melanie on Aug 26, 2006 19:21:33 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by sordes on Aug 27, 2006 12:40:53 GMT
I still have my doubts that megalania really lived at Flores. There was a documentation about the hobbits showing a computer-generated Megalania at this island, but I have never read about any relics of megalania at Flores. Furthermore it woulb be strange, because there were also komodo dragons on the island, it is very unprobable that both species could have lived together on a small island.
|
|
|
|
Post by Melanie on Aug 27, 2006 13:07:23 GMT
Well, i have just read your discussion in the German Kryptozoology Forum. I have also a theory: I could imagine that smaller monitors than megalania came to Flores and had much better conditions than all other species on Flores. They became much larger in the progress of time because their prey (elephants, humans) was larger than in their previous habitat. After the food became scarce on Flores they colonized other islands and finaly they reached Australia and became Megalania prisca.
|
|
|
|
Post by sordes on Aug 27, 2006 14:47:21 GMT
As far as I know megalania was a member of the Gould-complex, a group a medium-sized to large varanids which inhabit Australia. So I suppose Megalania was an example of convergent evolution, as a result of a specialization for large mammals as prey. The komodo dragon is a comparably young species, which probably developed just after the developement of pygmy elephants. Its ancestors were surely smaller and lesser compact and resembled probably Varanus salvator.
Komodo dragons swim between the islands of their native habitat, but I doubt that they could reach Australia. Megalania is known for a time of several million years in Australia, but Stegodons lived untill some ten thousand years at Flores, so they would have had enough food.
|
|
|
|
Post by sordes on Aug 27, 2006 14:51:35 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by Melanie on Aug 27, 2006 15:25:39 GMT
Thanks for this great link. Especially the photograph of the skeletal mount is great.
|
|
|
|
Post by sordes on Aug 27, 2006 17:05:37 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by surroundx on Aug 23, 2015 4:33:29 GMT
Temporal overlap of humans and giant lizards (Varanidae; Squamata) in Pleistocene AustraliaAbstract An obvious but key prerequisite to testing hypotheses concerning the role of humans in the extinction of late Quaternary ‘megafauna’ is demonstrating that humans and the extinct taxa overlapped, both temporally and spatially. In many regions, a paucity of reliably dated fossil occurrences of megafauna makes it challenging, if not impossible, to test many of the leading extinction hypotheses. The giant monitor lizards of Australia are a case in point. Despite commonly being argued to have suffered extinction at the hands of the first human colonisers (who arrived by 50 ka), it has never been reliably demonstrated that giant monitors and humans temporally overlapped in Australia. Here we present the results of an integrated U–Th and 14C dating study of a late Pleistocene fossil deposit that has yielded the youngest dated remains of giant monitor lizards in Australia. The site, Colosseum Chamber, is a cave deposit in the Mt Etna region, central eastern Australia. Sixteen new dates were generated and demonstrate that the bulk of the material in the deposit accumulated since ca. 50 ka. The new monitor fossil is, minimally, 30 ky younger than the previous youngest reliably dated record for giant lizards in Australia and for the first time, demonstrates that on a continental scale, humans and giant lizards overlapped in time. The new record brings the existing geochronological dataset for Australian giant monitor lizards to seven dated occurrences. With such sparse data, we are hesitant to argue that our new date represents the time of their extinction from the continent. Rather, we suspect that future fossil collecting will yield new samples both older and younger than 50 ka. Nevertheless, we unequivocally demonstrate that humans and giant monitor lizards overlapped temporally in Australia, and thus, humans can only now be considered potential drivers for their extinction. Source: Price, Gilbert J., Louys, Julien, Cramb, Jonathan, Feng, Yue-xing, Zhao, Jian-xin, Hocknull, Scott A., Webb, Gregory E., Nguyen, Ai Duc and Joannes-Boyau, Renaud. (2015). Temporal overlap of humans and giant lizards (Varanidae; Squamata) in Pleistocene Australia. Quaternary Science Reviews 125: 98-105. [ Abstract]
|
|
|
|
Post by surroundx on Aug 21, 2016 11:19:35 GMT
Price, Gilbert J. (2016). The ice age Lizards of Oz. Australasian Science 37(3): 20-23. [ Abstract] " Abstract: A chance finding in a Queensland cave has revealed that giant and dangerous lizards still lived when the first humans reached Australia." |
|
|
|
Post by surroundx on Jan 3, 2017 11:51:55 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by surroundx on Jan 3, 2017 11:52:29 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by surroundx on Jan 4, 2017 12:20:55 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by surroundx on Aug 20, 2017 8:12:17 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by surroundx on Jun 2, 2018 11:36:37 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by surroundx on Jun 2, 2018 11:50:55 GMT
|
|
