Komodo (island) and Botanical Gardens in Bogor, Java. The records that Ouwens made are the first reliable documentation of details about what is now called the Komodo dragon (or Komodo monitor). Ouwens was keen to obtain additional samples. He recruited hunters who killed two dragons measuring 3.1 metres and 3.35 metres as well as capturing two pups, each measuring less than one metre. Ouwens carried out studies on the samples and concluded that the Komodo dragon was not a flame-thrower but was a type of monitor lizard. Research results were published in 1912. Ouwens named the giant lizard "Varanus komodoensis". Realizing the
Giant girdled lizard they command a very high price. Most of these animals are smuggled out of the country and are not accompanied by the CITES permits required in legal exports/imports of the species. In its native South Africa, it is illegal to possess a sungazer (dead or alive) without a permit. "Cordylus tropidosternum" and "Cordylus jonesii" are occasionally marketed as “dwarf sungazers.” Giant girdled lizard The sungazer ("Smaug giganteus", syn. "Cordylus giganteus"), also known as the giant girdled lizard or giant dragon lizard or giant zonure, is the largest species of the Cordylidae, a family of lizards from Sub-Saharan Africa. This threatened