Free Republic

As if life wasn't hard enough during the last Ice Age, a new study has found Australia's first human inhabitants had to contend with giant killer lizards. Researchers working in Central Queensland were amazed when they unearthed the first evidence that Australia's early human inhabitants and giant apex predator lizards had overlapped

The phrase ‘like a sitting duck’ comes to mind when watching this. In the below clip, we get to see a Komodo dragon approaching two ducks – the reptile is fast but the ducks actually have plenty of time to get away. For some reason, they leave it too late! The dragon approaches one of the ducks but it flaps its wings furiously and seems to be escaping. Meanwhile, the second duck assumes that it is safe and stays close by – thanking its lucky stars that it was not the target of the reptile’s attention. What a mistake that...

Maen still has nightmares about that morning. About those few minutes in which he almost died. About the time he was attacked by a man-eating reptile and had to fight it off to save his life. "I don't like to tell my story anymore because when I tell again, when I'm sitting alone, I remember," he says, softly and humbly. "I would like to try to forget this story." But Maen, the quiet-spoken middle-aged Indonesian, has agreed to tell me his tale so I can share it. He thinks it's important for people to understand the dangers of the Komodo...

Charlie, a female Komodo dragon at the Chattanooga Zoo in Tennessee, has proved to be the ultimate independent lady after successfully giving birth to three hatchlings without a male partner.Charlie, a female Komodo dragon at the Chattanooga Zoo in Tennessee, has proved to be the ultimate independent lady after successfully giving birth to three hatchlings without a male partner. Even though Charlie and a potential mate named Kadal were placed together in hopes of breeding, the first-time mother produced the three brothers, named Onyx, Jasper, and Flint. She was able to do this on her own through a phenomenon called...

Murids, as the rat family is known, are more taxonomically diverse than any other mammal group and are found in nearly every part of the world... The study was based on remains recovered from the limestone cave known as Liang Bua, where partial skeletons of H. floresiensis have been found, along with stone tools and the remains of animals -- most of them rats. In fact, out of the 275,000 animal bones identified in the cave so far, 80 percent of them are from rodents... The study encompassed about 10,000 of the Liang Bua rat bones. The remains spanned five...

The world's largest living lizard species, the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), is vulnerable to extinction and yet little is known about its natural history. New research by a team of palaeontologists and archaeologists from Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia, who studied fossil evidence from Australia, Timor, Flores, Java and India, shows that Komodo Dragons most likely evolved in Australia and dispersed westward to Indonesia.

The Komodo dragon is not just the largest living lizard, but also one of the most venomous creatures on Earth, scientists have discovered. The carnivorous animal, which can tear its prey apart, kills with venom rather than bacteria-laden bites, as scientists had always believed. The dragons, which grow to a length of about 10ft and weigh about 130lb (60kg) are vicious predators that prey on animals as large as deer. They attack their victim by biting and tearing at it repeatedly, then wait as it dies a lingering death. Scientists always believed that because Komodos also fed on carrion, their...