The mighty komodo dragon is the lizard of nightmares. With a maximum weight of 366 pounds, 10 ft in length, skin reinforced with oesteoderms giving it armor, and equipted with serrated dentition capable of cutting through bone, and to top it off, highly efficient venom that takes effect almost instantly in large, warm blooded animals. this lizard dominates the few Indonesian islands as top predator.
Now rewind backwards 2.5 million years ago during the pleistocene era in austrailia, there was another varanid virtually identical to the komodo dragon, but was over 5 times hevier. The 23 ft, 1 ton megalania was among the most ferocious land predators to have ever lived alongside our ancestors. At the time, we were most likely hunted by these large monitor lizard along side huge marsupials of a wide variety.
This was a quick sketch I made today. These sketches kind of show how I formulate the posture and demension of the animals I draw, so I though it would be pretty neat to share them. This megalania has human contact before, spears are embedded into the skin, but are far from life threatening to the large, armored reptile. The spears would likely fall off in a while.
I really like this one along with the dire wolf and the epicyon. I will scan these images before doing further detail into them.