Stegodon may have looked superficially very familiar to us, but its direct ancestors lived even before Asian elephants, African elephants, and mammoths began their separate evolutionary journeys. share. Sort by. A Komodo Dragon trying to retrieve a stegodon carcass from homo florensis. Close. 75. save hide report. There is some puzzlement about the still living Komodo dragon, named after the Indonesian island of Komodo, much smaller than Flores and immediately to its West. 96% Upvoted. (2008) The youngest stegodon remains in Southeast Asia from the Late Pleistocene archaeological site Liang Bua, Flores, Indonesia. Diamond JM (1987) Did Komodo dragons evolve to eat pygmy elephants? They existed from 11 million years ago to as recently as 6,000 years ago in Asia, Africa and even North America. Stegodon sondaari is presumed to have died out about a million years ago, before the arrival of anything even vaguely human-like on Flores. best. Without doubt, one of the coolest living animals on the planet is the Komodo dragon Varanus komodoensis, a giant flesh-eating lizard that kills water buffalo, ... (both Elephas and Stegodon⦠[41] The Komodo dragon drinks by sucking water into its mouth via buccal pumping (a process also used for respiration), lifting its head, and letting the water run down its throat. View Article Google Scholar 10. van den Bergh GD, et al. Log in or sign up to leave a comment log in sign up. A Komodo Dragon trying to retrieve a stegodon carcass from homo florensis. Nature 326: 832. 6 comments. Posted by 5 months ago. The Komodo dragon may have evolved to feed on the extinct dwarf elephant Stegodon that once lived on Flores, according to evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond. The Komodo dragon is the last of these giants, but within the last 2,000 years, their populations have diminished severely, most likely due to humans, and ⦠Living monitors are known from warm areas of Africa, Asia, and Australia, but are also known from fossils throughout Europe. Quaternary International 182: 16â48. By 50,000 years ago, all traces of hobbit, stegodon, vulture, stork, and komodo dragon were gone from the cave,â Saptomo says. For example, the Komodo dragons may have eaten or scavenged pygmy elephants (Stegodon) (Auffenberg, 1981; Diamond, 1987). Further afield, the Soa Basin, which lies 50 km to the east of Liang Bua, has sites of Early and Middle Pleistocene age, where the remains of Komodo dragon and Stegodon ⦠... Stegodon, the âelephantâ with sideways trunk The cave hyenas of ice age Europe The Komodo dragon may have evolved to feed on the extinct dwarf elephant Stegodon that once lived on Flores, according to evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond. View Images ⦠The most famous member, the Komodo dragon, is the largest living lizards. Without doubt, one of the coolest living animals on the planet is the Komodo dragon Varanus komodoensis, a giant flesh-eating lizard that kills water buffalo, ... (both Elephas and Stegodonâ¦