Apr 19, 2024
veryyyyy late flocking post :')
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veryyyyy late flocking post :')
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Australia's Lost Dragon, Megalania. Varanids are the coolest animals ever don't @ me.
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Paleostream 13/04/2024
here are today's #Paleostream sketches!!! today we drew Balaur bondoc, Varanus priscus (megalania), Styracosaurus, and Euparkeria
Sheila and the Saurian
Around 48,000 years ago during the Late Pleistocene in Australia, a fierce Aboriginal sheila faces down against the predatory giant lizard Varanus priscus (also known as Megalania)! In a few millennia, the big lizards as well as most of the other megafauna of Australasia will go extinct, possibly as a consequence of the newly arriving humans' activities.
cousins from very distant places
varanus sivalensis and Varanus priscus
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So everyone loves Megalania (Varanus priscus), the giant monitor lizard from Pleistocene Australia. But here's something I found out today. For a brief period of time in the 1880s Richard Owen, the guy who described it, thought it was a giant spiny lizard similar and possibly related to the Thorny Devil. At that time this reconstruction was created.
The reason is about as dumb as you would think. So while Megalania was originally described based on a few vertebrae, Owen was beginning to referr more and more material to the animal, a lot of the time without the bones showing any overlap. Now around 1880 the skull of the giant turtle Ninjemys was found in Australia and sent to Owen in London. G. F. Bennett, who found the skull, correctly identified it as a turtle and mentioned as much in a letter to Owen.
Except Owen seemingly ignored that or disagreed, because he swiftly proposed that the skull was actually that of a lizard and not just that, specifically that of Megalania. As if that wasn't already an unholy chimera enough for you, the limb bones that Owen assigned to Megalania at the time were those of a GODDAMN MARSUPIAL. Not even a reptile.
Even when studying more turtle skulls from Lord Howe Island, Owen insisted that what he had were actually lizards, which he considered to be relatives of Megalania (naming them Meiolania). Eventually both Huxlay and Woodward got involved, recognizing the two skulls as turtles and removing all the non-lizard stuff from Owen's Megalania. But for just a brief period of time Megalania was some uncanny hybrid between monitor lizard, giant wombat (art by Gabriel Ugueto) and tail-clubed turtle (art by Joschua Knüppe)
It is 400,000 years ago in the middle Pleistocene epoch. On a tropical island positioned somewhere between Southeast Asia and Australasia, the giant monitor lizard Varanus priscus attacks the giant orangutan relative Gigantopithecus blacki. No matter how much of a fight it puts up, the great ape is likely doomed, as its reptilian adversary possesses a venomous bite like the related Komodo dragon.
By the way, the small goat-like animal fleeing the scene would be a mainland serow (Capricornis sumatraensis), whereas the bird showing shock to the upper left is a great hornbill (Buceros bicornis). Unlike the two main combatants here, which have both gone extinct, both the serow and the hornbill are still around in Southeast Asia.
It is 50,000 years ago in the insular continent of Australia. The giant monitor lizard Varanus priscus (once known as “Megalania”) is taking a stroll alongside the river when a hungry saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) leaps out of the water to attack it. During the Pleistocene epoch, both of these massive predatory reptiles would have ruled as the apex predators of their respective habitats. However, whereas the giant monitor would eventually go extinct, the saltwater crocodile still haunts the waters of northern Australia (as well as Southeast Asia and Melanesia) in the present day.