(Credit: Ruchira Somaweera)

(Inside Science) — Extinction wiped out their closest family members as well as most of the ancient reptiles of comparable size. But the largest lizards still on the planet, the Komodo dragon, survived due to a lucky combination of mediocre habitat on their home islands and unintended human interventions.

“You would have thought the Komodo would have been wiped out, and yet it survived,” said Rick Shine, a biologist at Macquarie University in Sydney and one