Dinosaurs just got venom: Komodo dragon linked to African fossils

Komodos may be the biggest, baddest lizard out there, but a recent study linking the Komodo Dragon, native to Indonesia, to ancient African lizards just brought them to another level of coolness. Canadian biologists Alison Murray and Rob Holmes found the vertebrae of these two animals is the key connecting them together. From Physorg.org:

Holmes says the telltale African vertebrae fossils belonged to a lizard that was about a metre- and-a-half long whose ability to swim may be key to figuring out how more than 30 million years later its ancestors turned up on the other side of the world. Holmes says the ancient African Varanus specimen was found on land that was once the bottom of a river or small lake. "Whether the animals lived in the water or surrounding land, we don't know, but we do know that some modern day species of Varanus are comfortable swimming in fresh water." The researchers agree that fresh-water swimming wouldn't get the African lizard all the way to Indonesia. Murray says the mystery of how the animals spread deepens when you consider ancient world geography. "From about 100 million years ago until 12 million years ago, Africa was completely isolated, surrounded by ocean, but somehow they got out of Africa during that period," said Murray. "That's why this paper is important because there was no known land connection." Murray says one unproven theory of how Varanus moved out of Africa is that over millions of years, small land masses or micro-plates may have moved from one place to another, carrying their fauna with them.

After the bump you will find the actual abstract for the paper, published in Palaeontology:

A large collection of lizard vertebrae from northern Africa represents the oldest unambiguous occurrence of the genus Varanus. The fossils come from late Eocene and early Oligocene freshwater deposits of the Fayum, Egypt, an area noted for many significant primate finds. The recovery and identification of this material indicate that the genus Varanus arose in Africa, before dispersing to Australia and Asia. This dispersal occurred prior to the early to mid-Miocene, by which time fossil Varanus are known from Australia and Eurasia. Although the dispersal route remains unknown, the lizard material reported here supports the hypothesis that a corridor existed allowing freshwater and terrestrial organisms to cross from Africa to Asia.

The full paper can be read here.