Some years ago a Central Queensland farmer recovered a number of unusual bones on his property. Believing he had made an important find, he gave the bones to university palaeontologists in Brisbane.

The bones caused a sensation among Australian palaeontologists; not because they were from the giant Australian monitor lizard Megalania prisca, Owen, believed extinct at least several thousand years, but because they were as recent as 300 years old!

This disclosure implies that, if these huge monsters were still roaming Queensland's interior a mere 300 years ago, claimed sightings of these reptiles in modern times in remote areas of Australia suggest Megalania is far from extinct. Needless to say, the find was quickly hushed up.

After all, it is embarrassing to have a seven-meter (or more) long, several-hundred-kilogram monitor lizard species already declared extinct by "competent" scientists, continuing to survive, when conventional opinion dictates it died out with the rest of the Australian megafauna at the close of the last ice age!

The conservative scientific community, continues to argue that no animal species remain undiscovered, because the entire continent has been completely explored and mapped long ago, making it impossible for any unknown species to have escaped detection by scientists.

True, say believers, Australia has been explored, but there still remain thousands of square kilometers around this continent, consisting of virtually inaccessible mountainous forest country where any unknown or supposedly extinct species could easily survive, hidden from modern human detection.