What Scientists Found About Australia's Megalania Shouldn't Exist

What Scientists Found About Australia's Megalania Shouldn't Exist

In 1859, a British naturalist examining three unusual vertebrae purchased for the British Museum realized he was holding something no one had seen before. A reptile, and judging by the bones alone, one of the largest to ever walk on land. He named it Megalania. Over 160 years later, scientists still can't agree how big it really was, or whether the first humans on this continent ever had to look up and see one alive.

We're pretty much tracing the story of Megalania, the largest terrestrial lizard known to have existed, up to 7 metres long, and the 2015 study that pushed the confirmed overlap between giant lizards and humans back more than 30,000 years, finally making humans a real suspect in its extinction. No complete skeleton has ever been found. The full story is still buried somewhere.

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