Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 135
Abulobo, overlooking the Soa Basin, vents steam in the early morning light.
showed that the animals had been disarticulated and butchered by someone.
And it was striking that most of the skeletons that the team of diggers encoun-
tered belonged to young animals. It seemed likely that these Stegodon babies
had been easier for their unknown hunters to kill than the more dangerous
adults.
As the excavators dug down, the bones of even more daunting creatures,
supersized Komodo dragons, began to turn up. The present-day Komodo
dragons, 3 meters long and weighing as much as 140 kilograms, are deter-
mined predators. The can attack and kill water buf alo. Their bite poisons
their prey with secretions from glands in their jaws that cause severe bleeding.
The secretions also lull the prey into calmly accepting their imminent doom.
During the time that the excavators were exploring, the ancestors of
the Komodo dragons were widespread throughout Australasia. And some
of those extinct ancestors were much larger than the present-day dragons.
