Early humans shared the continent of Australia with a carnivorous lizard known as Megalania Prisca. This predator was as long as a bus and weighed over a ton. Many still believe that a giant lizard is still prowling the western Pacific area. Eyewitness reports describe a 30 foot long dragon-like reptile with an elongated neck and skull. The MonsterQuest team searches for a remnant population of Megalania Prisca or a giant Komodo dragon in the episode entitled “Real Dragons”.
The Background
Megalania Prisca was a real monster that inhabited Australia during the Pleistocene era. This huge member of the monitor lizard family was up to 23 feet in length and weighed up to 4,300 pounds. Fossil remains show that this creature lived from about 2 million years ago to as recently as 40,000 years ago. This would have brought the early aboriginal settlers of Australia into contact with this huge carnivore.
These early encounters between humans and Megalania Prisca must have been terrifying. Aboriginal cave paintings depict a reptilian creature that is much larger than a human. Some depict stories of reptiles that brought fire and destruction with them. Many of these cave paintings are thought to be less than 10,000 years old.
Author and journalist Peter Hancock is an expert on the Aboriginal legends of Megalania Prisca. He relates one story of a Megalania that wandered into the ocean. The Megalania is attacked by a great white shark. The Megalania kills the shark and drags it to shore. Hancock notes that it is strange that these stories and paintings are so fresh with Aborigines tens of thousands of years after Megalania Prisca supposedly went extinct.
Author and Cryptozoologist Rex Gilroy believes that the stories are fresh with the Aborigines because Megalania Prisca has not gone extinct. He relates the story of how the Australian town of Euroa was terrorized by a giant lizard in 1890. The story tells of a 30 foot reptile raiding farms and killing livestock. Many eyewitnesses reportedly saw the creature before it retreated back into the bush.
Gilroy has chronicled some more modern Megalania Prisca sightings. In Alice Springs, a group of aborigines reported seeing a giant reptile come through their camp. Another sighting by a scout master and boy scouts report a 22 foot long lizard.
One Megalania sighting did yield some proof. In the winter of 1979, Gilroy received a call from a farmer in Moruya. This farmer reported seeing a 20 foot long lizard that left tracks. Gilroy was able to make a plaster cast of one of the tracks. In January of 2008, Gilroy found additional tracks on a forest trail about 185 miles from Moruya. He made a cast of these lizard-like tracks and found them to be very similar to the tracks from 1979.
Most experts do not believe that these Megalania sightings are real. John Long is a paleontologist with the Museum Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. He believes that in order to survive Megalania Prisca would need to have a large breeding population that would be hard to hide.
A recent discovery with Megalania’s cousin, the Komodo dragon, may provide a possible solution to the large breeding population problem. In 2006, it was discovered that Komodo dragons could reproduce through a process known as parthenogenesis. Through this process, unfertilized eggs laid by a female can incubate and hatch with no interaction with a male Komodo dragon. It is theorized that this helps the species survive in isolated areas. This process will only work for one generation as only male hatchlings are produced in this manner. It does, however, show that the size of a viable breeding population of Megalania may be much smaller than previously believed.
Some believe that the giant lizard sightings may be attributed the presence of a giant Komodo dragon. The Komodo dragons of Indonesia are the largest known lizards in existence today. They can reach a length of up to 10 feet and weigh up to 370 pounds. They are dangerous carnivores with poisonous saliva. They are efficient predators that have been known to attack anything including humans.
Komodo dragon attacks are becoming more common as they come into contact more often with humans. In June 2007, an eight year old boy from Komodo village was attacked and killed by a Komodo dragon. In June of 2008, a group of divers became stranded on an island and were attacked by a group of Komodo dragons. Known Komodo dragons are intimidating but some believe that there could be giant Komodo dragons in the wild.
If an unknown giant lizard was going to be found, Indonesia would be a good possible location. Indonesia is made up of 17,508 islands with only about 6,000 of them inhabited. The Komodo dragon remained hidden to western eyes until 1910. Dutch administrator Lt. van Hensbrock was investigating reports of a 20 foot lizard when he became the first westerner to encounter the Komodo dragon.
Trooper Walsh is a retired biologist from the Smithsonian National Zoo and an expert on Komodo dragons. He believes that Megalania Prisca and the Komodo dragon probably shared a common ancestor. Walsh also notes that this type of lizard can mutate and adapt quickly. He believes that a much larger version of a Komodo dragon could evolve in a few generations.
The Investigation
The MonsterQuest team takes on the search for Megalania Prisca and giant Komodo dragons. They will send expeditions to the Indonesian islands and Wollemi National Park in Australia. MonsterQuest will arrange for Gilroy’s Megalania track cast to be analyzed by an expert.
The Komodo Dragon Expedition
The search for a giant Komodo dragon is led by Achmad Ariefandy from the Komodo Survival Program. The expedition starts with the known Komodo dragon population on the remote island of Rinca.
The team hangs a goat carcass from a tree. The carcass is placed up high enough that the dragons will not be able to get to it but the smell will draw them in. When they return to the carcass, they find a group of males has been drawn in to it. They are able to capture one of the larger ones and he is over seven feet long. They then notice an even larger male approaching the area. This large Komodo dragon is captured with some difficulty and he is over nine feet long.
They next go to Komodo Island in search of a giant dragon. The island is teaming with wild deer and boar that serve as the main food source for the Komodo dragon population. They are able to find additional dragons but are not able to locate any giants.
The Megalania Prisca Expedition
A MonsterQuest expedition is sent to the Wollemi National Park in search of a Megalania Prisca. Rex Gilroy leads the expedition to the area where he found his Megalania Prisca tracks in 2008. He is joined by wildlife expert Gary Opit, who is an expert in animal tracking and identifying.
The final member of the team is American biology professor and reptile expert Tony Gerard. He believes that some of the Australian sightings could be Perentic lizard which is a known type of monitor lizard on this continent. Reptiles can grow for their whole lives and Perentic lizards have been known to grow up to eight feet in length.
Gerard finds the Wollemi National Park area to be a good area for a possible Megalania Prisca population. The area has food sources like kangaroo and wombat along with the terrain that would help an ambush predator. The area has termite mounds which are used by monitor lizards for egg incubation.
The teams place camera traps in numerous locations in hopes of capturing photographic evidence of a Megalania Prisca. They bait the camera traps with fresh meat hung from trees. Members of the monitor lizard family are active scavengers that can smell food from over a mile away so the meat should draw in any lizards in the area.
The expedition is unable to find any evidence of Megalania Prisca. The camera traps do not show any evidence of a giant lizard. Opit is unable to locate any signs of the creature in the area.
Megalania Track Casts
The casts of purported Megalania Prisca tracks taken by Gilroy are sent to Melbourne for analysis. Paleontologist John Long examines the casts and does not believe the tracks were formed by a Megalania Prisca. The shape of the foot from known Megalania fossils does not match the shape of the cast. Long believes that the symmetry of the track is too perfect as if it was made up.
Conclusions
The MonsterQuest team was unable to find any evidence of a modern day Megalania Prisca or a giant Komodo dragon. It is fascinating to think that humans shared their world with a monster like Megalania Prisca in the recent past. With the relatively recent discovery of Komodo dragons and the realization in just the last couple of years about their reproductive quirks, the possibility of a mystery lizard is still out there.
MonsterQuest Episode: Real Dragons
Air Date: 5 November, 2008
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