The creature may have evolved in Australia

Oct 7, 2009 05:45 GMT  ·  By

According to the latest scientific study on the matter, it would appear that the famous Komodo Dragon, which currently lives mostly in Indonesia, first appeared and developed in Australia. Experts believe that the creature then migrated westwards, until it finally reached its current location, where it set up a permanent residence. Previously, evolutionary biologists believed that the Dragon (Varanus komodoensis) evolved in Indonesia, from a smaller ancestor, LiveScience reports.

The older research also indicated that the increased size might have been a direct result of a lack of natural predators, as well as the fact that the Dragon specialized in hunting pygmy elephants known as Stegodons. In the new investigations, numerous fossils, ranging from 300,000 years old to four million years old, were extracted from Australia. After some debate and analysis, it was determined that the remains indeed belonged to Komodo Dragons, placing the fossils in Australia long before those in Indonesia.

“When we compared these fossils to the bones of present-day Komodo dragons, they were identical. Now we can say Australia was also the birthplace of the three-meter (10 foot) Komodo dragon,” Queensland Museum in Australia vertebrate paleontologist and researcher Scott Hocknull explains. Until some 40,000 years ago, the continent was home to the largest known lizard in the world, the five-meter (16-foot) Megalania giant. Generally, over the past four million years, the biggest lizards lived there, as the conditions were appropriate for their development.

“There are a lot of things we just simply don't know about this part of the world – Indonesia to Australia. In recent years this region has thrown up remarkable discoveries – a new species of hominid, the 'Lost World' in New Guinea boasting dozens of new species having never met humans, and now an island chain of giant lizards, including the largest of them all, Megalania from Australia. However, they all went extinct, except the Komodo dragon. The big question now is why? The south-east Asian to Australian region is a hot-spot of new and exciting discoveries,” the expert adds.

“Understanding the past history of a species is absolutely fundamental to determining its potential trajectory in the future, its responses to climate change, habitat change and extinction events. The Komodo dragon's fossil record shows that it is a resilient species – resilient to major climatic changes throughout its past, surviving extinction events which wiped out contemporary megafauna species,” Hocknull concludes.