Early Australians Overlapped With Giant, Predatory Lizards

Plants and Animals





Photo credit:

A living Komodo dragon and an illustration showing how the osteoderm bone reinforces the scales and acts like body armor. Photo of Komodo dragon by Bryan Fry, inset by Gilbert Price

A tiny fossil discovered in central eastern Australia turned out to be a piece of bone from the natural body armor of a giant monitor lizard – possibly an ancient Komodo dragon. According to researchers who dated the fossil, the apex predator overlapped, at least in time, with the continent’s early human inhabitants. The findings were published in Quaternary Science Reviews.