Posted on 10/03/2015 7:44:05 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
While the concept of men battling 16–foot prehistoric lizards sounds like something out of a 50’s sci-fi flick, a new discovery in Australia has revealed that such encounters may have occurred. According to a study appearing in Quaternary Science Reviews, researchers from the University of Queensland have found a tiny fossil that belonged to a giant lizard bone 50,000 years ago, indicating that gigantic reptiles and humans once co–existed.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Still do. See Komodo Dragon...
It figures they were in Australia.
16 ft lizard. Sound like good eatin’.
Don’t we usually call giant lizards dinosaurs?
Lizards, giant or otherwise, are not dinosaurs - calling one the other is foolish and misleadiing.
Dinosaurs are more closely related to birds.
Are alligators and crocodiles classified as lizards?
I recall one theory that proposed they killed them off by lighting brush fires in the early morning when they were torpid after a cool night.
Freegards
Lizards are cold blooded. Dinosaurs appear to have been warm-blooded.
I don’t think so, but ...
Wiki for what its worth:
“Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with approximately over 6,000 species,[1] ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The group, traditionally recognized as the suborder Lacertilia, is defined as all extant members of the Lepidosauria (reptiles with overlapping scales) that are neither sphenodonts (i.e., tuatara) nor snakes – they form an evolutionary grade.[2] While the snakes are recognized as falling phylogenetically within the Toxicofera clade from which they evolved, the sphenodonts are the sister group to the squamates, the larger monophyletic group, which includes both the lizards and the snakes.”
What I’m finding is that Alligators and Crocodiles are classified Crocodillia with lizards falling in the squamata category.
In the case of Australia it sounds like they were talking about an oversized monitor lizard of some type. Australia also had the Elephant Birds or Moas till fairly recently.
http://messybeast.com/extinct/moa.htm
No big surprise. Komodo dragons measure 10 ft.
Any immediate coexistence was probably short and likely ended very, very badly for the human.
Here is some documentary footage from a group that had been on an uncharted island in the South Pacific. No word if they came across 7 shipwreck survivors. They may have been on another island.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoTOAkzQk-4
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