Word: komodo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...their crates and hissed their sullen woe. They were waiting for a U. S. customs officer to let them be hauled up to The Bronx Zoo. They could afford to wait. They had come a long way. In space it was 11,000 mi., from the Island of Komodo between Sumbawa and Flores in the Dutch East Indies. In time it was more than 60,000,000 years...
Scientists who were told of these beasts 25 years ago laughed lightly, assured tale-bearers that such things had not walked the earth since Eocene times. Natives who passed Komodo described something which sounded like a dragon. Everyone knew that dragons were as mythological as the Minotaur. But the tales kept coming and in 1912 Major P. W. Ouwens of Java's Buitzenborg Zoo dispatched collectors to Komodo. They brought back creatures which not only closely resembled an Eocene reptile but were also almost exact replicas of the St. George dragon. Zoologist Ouwens named the new species Varanns komodoensis...
...specimen is known to have been killed, the name "prenty." Queensland has ocean-going crocodiles, second cousins of lizards, 33 ft. long, largest on earth. It has huge monitor lizards which can run, swim, climb facilely. The largest monitor lizards known are savage "dragons" on the East Indian islands Komodo, Rintja and Flores. They attain loft. lengths. There is good reason to assume that the scary "prenty" is an Australian monitor...