Megalania
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| Varanus priscus (Richard Owen, 1859) |
Megalania (Greek, "great roamer"), the giant goanna is an extinct giant monitor lizard. It was one of the megafauna that roamed southern Australia, and appears to have disappeared around 40,000 years ago.
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[edit] Taxonomy
Megalania was once thought to belong to a distinct monotypic genus and called Megalania prisca, (Greek Μέγας "great" + ἀλαίνω "roam"). Its placement as a valid genus remains controversial, with many authors preferring to consider it a junior synonym of Varanus (Molnar, 2004), which encompasses all living monitor lizards. The first aboriginal settlers of Australia would certainly have encountered living Megalania.
[edit] Naming Confusion
The name Megalania prisca was coined by Sir Richard Owen to mean "Great Roamer." A name he made "in reference to the terrestrial nature of the great Saurian" (Owen, 1859). To do this Owen used a modification of the Greek word: plaina ("to roam about"). The close similarity of Owen's truncated plaina to the Latin word: lania (femine form for: butcher), resulted in numerous taxonomic and popular descriptions of Megalania mistranslating the name as: Ancient Giant Butcher.
As the gender of the genera Megalania and Varanus are different (feminine and masculine, respectively), the epithet prisca changes to priscus (in alignment with the code of the I.C.Z.N.), see Pianka et al., 2004.
[edit] Size
Lack of enough fossil material has made it very hard to determine the exact dimensions of Megalania (Molnar, 2004). Conservative estimates place the length of the largest individuals at a little over 7 meters (23 ft), with a maximum conservative weight of approximately 940 kg (2072 lbs [Molnar, 2004]). Average sized specimens would have been a leaner, but still impressive, 320 kg (704 lbs). Megalania was the largest terrestrial lizard to have ever lived, and a fearsome predator as well as a scavenger. Judging from its size, Megalania would feed mostly on medium to large sized animals, including any of the giant marsupials like Diprotodon along with other reptiles, small mammals, and birds and their eggs and chicks. It had heavily built limbs and body and a large skull complete with a small crest in between the eyes, and a jaw full of serrated blade-like 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 living relative is the perentie (Varanus giganteus), Australia's largest living lizard, not the Komodo Dragon.
[edit] Surviving remnants
There have been numerous reports and rumors of living Megalania in Australia, and occasionally in New Guinea, as recently as the late 1990s[1]. Australian cryptozoologist Rex Gilroy has stated that Megalania is still alive today, and it is only a matter of time until one is discovered alive[2]. In 1979 Gilroy made what he claimed were plaster casts of enormous lizard-like footprints found by a farmer in Queensland.
The possibility of a surviving population of the giant lizards in the Australian Outback is not generally accepted by mainstream scientists[3], who often state that reports of giant lizards only began after Megalania was first described, though there may have been several reports of similar sized lizards before Megalania's offical discovery[4].
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.cryptozoology.com/cryptids/megalania.php
- ^ http://www.mysteriousaustralia.com/australian_giant_reptilian_monsters-qld.html
- ^ http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/megalania/
- ^ Mysteries of the Unexplained by Readers Digest
- Molnar, R. 2004. Dragons in the Dust: The Paleobiology of the Giant Monitor Lizard Megalania. Indiana University Press.
- Owen, R. 1859. Description of Some Remains of a Gigantic Land-Lizard (Megalania prisca, Owen) from Australia. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 149: 43-48. [1]
- Pianka, E.R., King, D. and King, R.A. 2004. Varanoid lizards of the world. Indiana University Press, 588 pp.
- Wroe, S.: A review of terrestrial mammalian and reptilian carnivore ecology in Australian fossil faunas, and factors influencing their diversity: the myth of reptilian domination and its broader ramifications. Australian Journal of Zoology 50: 1–24. doi:10.1071/ZO01053 PDF fulltext
