WHOWHIE
Whowhie was a flesh-eating monster the size of a whale. It had a frog-like head with big, dark eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth. It had a long tail and six legs. The monster lived in a cave beneath the Murray River. At night it emerged and searched for campfires to lead it to human prey. Whowhie could devour whole tribes in one night.
The Aborigines defeated the monster by piling up brushwood around all the entrances to its lair as it slept then setting fire to the tinder dry material and smoking Whowhie to death. Some think this monster is a distorted memory of the giant monitor lizard Megalania prisca that would have hunted early human settlers in Australia.
This matter ALWAYS comes up in discussions of this sort.
ReplyDeleteAlthough it has been in continual use since its invention and remains common in the popular media, the nomen "Megalania prisca" has been actually INVALID since its invention. This is because it was named using fossils of more than one giant reptile in its description.
Heuvelmans uses the variation "Varanus prisca" which would be more accurate since it is a monitor lizard. There is also however the side issue of whether or not all monitors belong in the same genus, the differences between some of the species are as great as the differences between whole ORDERS of birds.
Taxonomy, ya gotta love it!