Giant Monitors
For years, reports of gigantic, dinosaur-like reptiles have come from several areas in the Australasian region, most notably Australia and New Guinea. The creatures are reputed to be monitor-like, but almost 30 feet in length, a size far exceeding even that of the largest known lizard, the Salvadori's monitor, Varanus salvadorii, which reaches lengths of up to 15 feet. Could these reports be accurate?
The Australian version of the giant monitor seems to inhabit the wilderness areas of northern Queensland, although most are reported from further south, in New South Wales and Victoria. A spate of Australian giant monitor sightings comes from the 1970s. One of the earliest monitor sightings comes from 1975, when two farmers stopped their car along a road in the Wattagan Mountains to move a log which was lying in their path. When they attempted to move it, though, the "log" obligingly moved itself - it was a giant monitor. The next sighting was made on December 27 of that same year, when a farmer at Cessnock (New South Wales), reported a monitor lizard nearly 30 feet long. The creature had a two-foot neck, a three-foot head, and stood nearly three feet tall. As far as the farmer could tell, the lizard had four legs.
Yet another sighting comes from 1979, when Australian herpetologist Frank Gordon, searching for skinks in the Wattagan Mountains, came across a large monitor 27-30 feet in length in the forest.
Similar creatures are known to the natives of Papua New Guinea. Called in their legends artrellia, the creatures are said to be nearly 30 feet long, and are supposedly fond of hiding in trees and dropping onto the backs of prey. In the early 1940s, David Marsh, later district commissioner of Port Moresby, said he had seen two reptiles some 20 feet in length. Soldiers stationed on New Guinea during World War II reported encounters with reptiles of comparable size.
In the small village of Kairuku, near Port Moresby, two agricultural officers, Lindsay Green and Fred Kleckhan, obtained the jawbone and skin of an Artrellia. D.M. Davies, a traveler, said in 1969 that he had been shown a native drawing of a bipedal lizard, evidently one of these "New Guinea dragons".
New evidence supporting the existence of the Artrellia came in 1978, when a film of the mysterious reptile was obtained by Jean Becker and Christian Meyer. The film was supposedly made in southern Papua New Guinea. And a scant two years later, in 1980, the question of the reptile's identity was decided. In that year, explorer John Blashford-Snell retrieved a specimen of what his native guides told him was a young Artrellia. The 6-foot reptile was identified by zoologists as a specimen of V. salvadorii.
The question remains, though, as to exactly what the New Guinea dragons - and for that matter, those of Australia - are. Although Blashford-Snell's specimen was identified as a Salvadori's monitor, even that gigantic reptile does not approach the size traditionally attributed to these monsters. Is there another explanation?
Until relatively recently, a truly gigantic monitor lived in Australia. The creature, whose remains date from the Quaternary Period, was christened Megalania priscus, and it attained lengths of up to 23 feet. Could the giant monitors be surviving specimens of Megalania?
BORD, Janet and Colin
1988 Unexplained
Mysteries of the 20th Century. Chicago: Contemporary.
SHUKER, Dr. Karl P.N.
1996
Here Be Dragons - Or Something Quite Like Them! Fate vol.
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