Fun Fact #575

 Fun Fact #575

“The Roaming Butcher”

Among the Aborigines in The Australian Bush you’ll hear tales of many on THe Dreamtime Monsters. One however stands above the rest when it comes to terrorizing the inhabitants of The Murry River: The Whowie. This lumbering behemoth was said to be a 7 meter long (22 feet) Goanna (type of lizard) with 6 legs and a ravenous appetite. Even if you survived the encounter it was said you’d never heal from the wounds and die even from scratches. Eventually in the dreamtime legends they learned how to hunt The Whowie by finding their holes during the day, and setting great fires before the entrance to blind and and make the Whowie sluggish –allowing hunters to more easily take them out, if it didn't suffocate before it could even leave it’s den. Yet was there any truth to these legends? 

First discovered by Sir Richard Owens in 1859, Megalainia (Varanus Priscus) is thought to be the largest terrestrial Lizard to have ever lived at 9.8 feet long excluding the tail (Dinosaurs are Archosaurs not Lizards).  With some evidence that they could get much bigger (23 feet) if there was abundant food, however this has yet to be confirmed.  Due to its size and close relation to The Komodo Dragon it’s thought that it would have preyed upon medium-to large scale prey –a list which includes every single Australian megafauna discussed last week. While they only had 4 legs they did have that “incurable bite” mentioned of in tales since their mouths appear to have contained glands for releasing hemotoxins which prevents the blood from clotting and attacks the internal organs so even if someone escaped, they’d either bleed to death, or die from their organs slowly shutting down over the course of days. Truly a grisly way to go and what earned it the name Megalania or "The Romaing Butcher".

This was made even worse by the fact that these things were still around 45,000 years ago when the first human settlements appeared on the continent meaning there may be some truth to the Dreamtime tales after all –albeit embellished a bit. 

Thanks for reading and please have a wonderful day.

Megalania skeletal reconstruction on Melbourne Museum steps