reptiles

One look at this creature and you'll think you've stepped into a scene in Jurassic Park. But this jumbo reptile is alive and well and living in the Indonesian Islands. The Komodo dragon is the largest living lizard on Earth -- they can measure up to 10 feet long and weigh as much as 140 pounds. They also have about 60 serrated teeth and have been known to consume up to 80 percent of their body weight in a single meal. That's no garden gecko.

It's long been known that Komodo dragons pack a powerful bite, but a new study by a research team at the University of Melbourne, Australia, shows that the effectiveness of the Komodo's bite comes from a combination of venom and highly specialized serrated teeth. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques, the team found that the Komodo dragon has the most complex venom glands ever described for any reptile, and that its giant extinct relative Megalania (Varanus priscus) was the largest venomous animal to have ever lived.

Confirming what had been a long-held hypothesis among paleontologists, scientists have now verified at the molecular level that the closest living relatives of Tyrannosaurus rex are indeed birds; most specifically ostriches and chickens. Skeletal evidence has strongly borne this theory out in recent years as data from fossils has accumulated, but this new study of bone proteins definitively shows that more of the T. rex genome is similar to birds' than to living reptiles'.