Early Australians alive during the last Ice Age likely had to deal with a giant killer lizard, though researchers could not pinpoint exactly what it was.
According to Discovery News, scientists at the University of Queensland (UQ) detailed a tiny bone called the osteoderm. Measuring about one centimeter, the bone helped put together a picture of what the fearsome lizard looked like.
The researchers published their study in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.
"Our jaws dropped when we found a tiny fossil from a giant lizard during a two meter deep excavation in one of the Capricorn Caves, near Rockhampton," Gilbert Price, a paleontologist at UQ, said in a press release. "The one-centimeter bone, an osteoderm, came from under the lizard's skin and is the youngest record of a giant lizard on the entire continent."
But the researchers could not determine what kind of lizard this beast was, but they do believe humans could have contributed to its demise.
"We can't tell if the bone is from a Komodo dragon - which once roamed Australia - or an even bigger species like the extinct Megalania monitor lizard, which weighed about 500kg and grew up to six meters long," Price said. "The find is pretty significant, especially for the timeframe that it dates.
"It's been long-debated whether or not humans or climate change knocked off the giant lizards, alongside the rest of the megafauna.
"Humans can only now be considered as potential drivers of their extinction."
