The Komodo dragon also known as the Komodo monitor, is a large species of lizard

Lizard

Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with nearly 3800 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica as well as most oceanic island chains...

 found in the Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

n islands of Komodo

Komodo (island)

Komodo is one of the 17,508 islands that make up the Republic of Indonesia. The island has a surface area of 390 km² and over 2000 inhabitants. The inhabitants of the island are descendants of former convicts who were exiled to the island and who have mixed themselves with the Bugis from...

, Rinca, Flores

Flores

Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, an island arc with an estimated area of 14,300 km² extending east from the Java island of Indonesia. The population was 1.831.000 in the 2010 census and the largest town is Maumere. Flores is Portuguese for "flowers".Flores is located east of Sumbawa...

, Gili Motang

Gili Motang

Gili Motang is a small island in Eastern Indonesia. It is part of the Lesser Sunda Islands chain, which together with the Greater Sunda Islands to the west make up the Sunda Islands.The island, volcanic in origin, is approximately 30 km² in area....

 and Gili Dasami. A member of the monitor lizard

Monitor lizard

Monitor lizards are usually large reptiles, although some can be as small as in length. They have long necks, powerful tails and claws, and well-developed limbs. Most species are terrestrial, but arboreal and semiaquatic monitors are also known...

 family (Varanidae

Varanidae

Varanidae is a group of lizards of the superfamily Varanoidea. The family is a group of carnivorous lizards which includes the largest living lizard, the Komodo dragon, and the crocodile monitor. Varanidae contains the living genus Varanus and a number of extinct taxa...

), it is the largest living species of lizard, growing to a maximum length of 3 metres (9.8 ft) in rare cases and weighing up to around 70 kilograms (154.3 lb). Their unusual size has been attributed to island gigantism

Island gigantism

Island gigantism or insular giantism is a biological phenomenon in which the size of animals isolated on an island increases dramatically in comparison to their mainland relatives....

, since there are no other carnivorous animals to fill the niche

Ecological niche

In ecology, a niche is a term describing the relational position of a species or population in its ecosystem to each other; e.g. a dolphin could potentially be in another ecological niche from one that travels in a different pod if the members of these pods utilize significantly different food...

 on the islands where they live.

However, recent research suggests that the large size of komodo dragons may be better understood as representative of a relict

Relict

A relict is a surviving remnant of a natural phenomenon.* In biology a relict is an organism that at an earlier time was abundant in a large area but now occurs at only one or a few small areas....

 population of very large varanid lizards that once lived across Indonesia and Australia, most of which, along with other megafauna

Megafauna

In terrestrial zoology, megafauna are "giant", "very large" or "large" animals. The most common thresholds used are or...

, died out after the Pleistocene.