Comments on: Debating the Dragon

By: J Pardo

J Pardo — Thu, 21 May 2009 03:36:28 +0000

As far as I know, Estesia is classified as a "monstersaur" and thus, is more closely related to Heloderma than to Varanus.

By: Monado

Monado — Wed, 20 May 2009 03:57:19 +0000

The bacteria were a first guess. After all, who wanted to look in a dragon’s mouth? I understand that the venom gland is large and complex.

By: Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry

Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:18:59 +0000

I too would love the chance to answer an expanded version of his ‘critique’

By: Cameron

Cameron — Tue, 19 May 2009 19:45:11 +0000

While the quote from Dr. Schwenk certainly is provocative and contentious, it would be nice to hear him expand on why he thinks the new hypothesis is “meaningless, irrelevant, incorrect or falsely misleading.” Making that claim alone is not very enlightening. Carl, any chance you could get Dr. Schwenk to guest post his thoughts on the matter?

By: synergy

synergy — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:33:03 +0000

The paper is already up, btw.

lol@neil

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:01:55 +0000

The Cretaceous lizard Estesia, which may be the sister group of the monitors, has deep grooves on its teeth which have been interpreted as venom delivery channels (see http://tinyurl.com/olefka). Also Heloderma, which is fairly closely related to both monitors and Estesia, has venomous saliva. So it’s not such a huge leap to accept that there are monitors that have venom glands.

By: neil

neil — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:01:11 +0000

Nice article Carl. WARNING: Reading Bryan Fry’s blog may cause dizziness, shortness of breath, chest pains, cold sweats, hot sweats, room temperature sweats, dry mouth, delusions of grandeur, delusions of mediocrity, sudden inexplicable ability to crochet, temporary blindness, night blindness, river blindness, noon blindness, olfactory hallucinations, rapid mood swings, magnetic attractiveness, low blood pressure, high blood pressure, and flavor crystals.

Schwenk gave you a nice closer there. Any chance that Schwenk and Fry will solve their debate with a snake-duel a la Fantastic Planet? Any chance that anyone get’s that reference. Okay, I’m done.

By: Romeo Vitelli

Romeo Vitelli — Tue, 19 May 2009 02:32:44 +0000

Old, sick mammals have deadly bacteria in their mouths? At least I have something to look forward to in my old age. Heaven help any kids I find on my lawn!

By: Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:24:05 +0000

It has. Of the many species of bacteria isolated from Komodo mouths, one proved lethal when injected into mice. But it’s not found in all Komodo dragon mouths, and it’s also found in old, sick mammals. These and other reasons to question the bacteria hypotheses are enumerated in the PNAS paper.

By: Romeo Vitelli

Romeo Vitelli — Mon, 18 May 2009 23:08:52 +0000

Either there’s deadly bacteria in Komodo saliva or there isn’t. Hasn’t this ever been directly tested? There are enough zoo specimens around.