The Australian continent is a continent surrounded by oceans, inhabited by many ancient and peculiar creatures. One of the most surprising and even "disgusting" is the Komodo dragon. It is the largest surviving lizard in the world today, mainly feeding on carrion, and saliva contains a large number of bacteria and viruses, which makes people feel afraid after seeing it. However, this giant lizard with a body length of more than 3 meters is not the largest lizard ever built on Earth, its ancestors ancient monitor lizards are even larger, more terrifying, and more terrifying than crocodiles.
The discovery of ancient monitor lizards
The ancient monitor lizard, also known as the giant toothed lizard, is a giant lizard that has become extinct from the earth, and is the ancestor of the largest surviving lizard, the Komodo dragon, and the ancient monitor lizard is also much larger than the Komodo dragon. It lived mainly on the Australian continent in the Pleistocene and lived with early humans for a time, becoming extinct 40,000 years ago.
Fossils of ancient monitor lizards were first discovered in 1859. Richard Owens, a naturalist from the United Kingdom, found fossils of giant organisms in the Condamina River in eastern Australia, which at first they thought were dinosaur fossils, but as the excavation process progressed, they found these fossils much later than the time of dinosaur extinction, but closer to the modern time interval.
The continuous excavation of fossils gradually completed the skeleton of this giant creature, and then Richard Owens named this giant ancient creature Megalania prisca, which translates to "ancient giant wanderer". Later, after years of research, and the discovery of more fossils of this species of organism, scientists found that the size of this creature is similar to the current Komodo dragon, and there is also a certain degree of kinship, combined with these factors, people officially named this creature "ancient monitor lizard".
Based on the ancient monitor lizard fossils found, scientists have conducted more morphological studies on them. Scientists believe that the ancient monitor lizard is a branch of the ancestor or evolutionary process of today's Komodo dragon. Subsequently, scientists began to restore the body length of the ancient monitor lizard. Early scientists believed that the body length of the ancient monitor lizard was about 7 meters long, and the weight could reach 600 kilograms. However, with the improvement of research methods and the continuous optimization of models, scientists have a new view of the body length of ancient monitor lizards. If there is a juvenile tail like a tree monitor lizard, then its body length can reach more than 8 meters, and its weight can weigh up to 2,000 kilograms, which can be said to be a creature at the top of the food chain.
At present, the fossils of the ancient monitor lizard can reflect its morphological structure more completely. Fossilized skulls show that the ancient monitor lizard had a large jaw with wide, backward-curved teeth on the inside of the jaw, which facilitated its predation and biting. At the same time, its limbs are very strong, its legs are large and strong, its skull is huge, and its neck is very long.
At the same time, the ancient monitor lizard was a very fierce carnivore, which was able to attack and successfully capture animals larger than itself. Its main food includes marsupials, diptycephalus, flat kangaroos, etc., and the predation speed is also very fast, it is estimated that it can reach about 3 meters per second, this predation speed with a huge body, like a chambered shell rushing to food, predation success rate is higher.
The horrors of the ancient monitor lizard
As the world's largest lizard found so far, the ancient monitor lizard was able to occupy the top of the food chain tens of thousands of years ago, and must have excellent predatory skills.
The ancient monitor lizard's first predatory weapon was its teeth. The ancient monitor lizard is also known as the Giant Ripper, and such a name is inextricably linked to its teeth. Paleontologists have studied the skull of the ancient monitor lizard and found that its mouth is connected with a strong masseter muscle, which means that it has a very strong bite force, and its mouth can open like a crocodile, and the bite force is also comparable to that of a crocodile. The teeth in the mouth are symmetrically distributed, and both groups of teeth are tightly arranged and curved backwards.
Such teeth can be pierced into the body of an predator like a hook and are not easily broken free. At the same time, these hook-like teeth also have very small serrated teeth, these jagged structures can directly tear off the flesh of predators, and the weight of the ancient monitor lizards themselves can also reach the pulling effect of predators, making it difficult for them to escape, greatly improving their predation success rate.
Later, paleontologists conducted biological analysis of the ancient monitor lizard's close relative tree monitor lizard. They found that the forked tongue in the mouth of the tree monitor lizard became a "detector" for exploring the direction, covered with a multitude of taste receptors, which could accurately distinguish the location and approximate distance of food at a distance of several kilometers. In response to the characteristics of tree monitor lizards, paleontologists speculate that ancient monitor lizards, as close relatives of tree monitor lizards, should also have the same predatory tools, and can accurately identify the location of food through forked tongues.
Subsequently, paleontologists conducted toxic analysis on another close relative of the ancient monitor lizard, the Komodo monitor lizard. Paleontologists scanned the Komodo dragon and found red and pink-spaced venom glands beneath the scales in its skull. When Komodo dragons bite or chew on animal flesh, this venom is injected into the animal's wound through its teeth and saliva. At the same time, paleontologists have discovered the principle of action of Komodo dragon venom through experimental research.
Paleontologists placed two copies of blood at the same time, one with the venom of the Komodo dragon and the other without any treatment, and they found that the blood clotting ability of the komodo dragon venom was very slow and almost impossible to coagulate. It turns out that the venom in komodo dragons can hinder the coagulation of platelets and slow down the healing speed of wounds, and many large animals die due to excessive blood loss after being bitten by Komodo dragons. Therefore, paleontologists have also deduced that ancient monitor lizards also have a similar principle of venom action.
And ancient monitor lizards have certain predation skills. It will patiently hide in the grass or bushes, quietly waiting for its prey to arrive. When it finds that the prey is close, it will immediately rush up and grab the prey with its claws and teeth, and then immediately inject venom into the prey, even if it can't kill the prey immediately, it will follow the prey until it loses too much blood and dies. The scales on the ancient monitor lizard also protected it from being scratched by prey, and its scales protected the ancient monitor lizard like armor.
The combination of sharp teeth and claws, venom in its mouth that prevents wounds from congealing, and its sheer size combined to form this prehistoric king of land crawling, but the ancient monitor lizard, which had such terrifying combat power, went extinct.
Extinction of the ancient monitor lizard
The cause of the ancient monitor lizard's extinction is still controversial, but its extinction seems to be related to humans. It is speculated that the ancient monitor lizard lived on the Australian continent for at least more than 1.4 million years before it became extinct. However, everything on this continent changed as the first humans arrived in the Australian continent 40,000 years ago in wooden boats.
Initially, humans were certainly filled with infinite fear when facing the ancient monitor lizard, and only escape was the best option. But humans had mastered the use of fire at that time, they used fire to fight against various wild animals, the forest where the fire passed became a wasteland, the forest disappeared, the habitat of the ancient monitor lizard became smaller and smaller, and the ancient monitor lizard went to extinction after losing its living space.
As human territory expands further into nature, more and more organisms lose their habitat, and alarm bells for the extinction of living things ring more frequently. At present, human beings should reduce their interference with wild creatures and give them a quiet habitat space, so as to achieve harmonious coexistence between man and nature and protect biological diversity.
Author: Ya Ya Editor: Wei Yang