A ancient style painting of a Komodo dragon riding the waves (not accurate of course).-art work done by DragonCid–
When the first explorers discovered the Komodo dragons they described them as Land crocodiles, they are the closest what we could get today to the fairy tale dragons. They are ferocious beasts with needle sharp teeth and a venomous bite, and the largest lizard in the world. With its binomial name being Varanus komodoensis, named by a Dutch scientist Pieter Anthonis Ouwens, who was a scientist and the director of Java Zoological Museum and Botanical Gardens. Pieter named it in a publication (1912) after he was sent a photo and a skin of a Komodo dragon from a fellow Dutchman called Lieutenant Jacques Karel Henri van Steyn van Hensbroek (1881-1944) -1-.
The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) is a part of the monitor lizard family (Varanus), they are heb