346: Burrunjor

The world moves fast. You work day, even faster. Pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data. Microsoft 365 Co-Pilot is your AI assistant for work, built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft 365 apps you use, helping you quickly write, analyze, create, and summarize. So you can cut through clutter and clear a path to your best work. Learn more at microsoft.com slash m365 co-pilot. All right, Matt. So what did Spartacus say when the lion ate his wife? I have no idea. Nothing. He was gladiator. Man. You're welcome. Good evening, everybody, and welcome to the Graveyard. Thank you for joining us tonight. My name is Adam and my name's Matt. Now pull up a tombstone or settle into your casket and get comfortable because this is Graveyard Tales. All right, everybody, here we are again, Matt. How you doing tonight, brother? I'm not doing too bad, man. How are you? Good. All right. Surviving this storm, we got flash floods going and everything. So you might hear thunder. I don't know. That's not a sound effect that I added. You might see Adam wearing a snorkel. You might here in a minute. And I mean, I already had the power go out twice today, so that's a possibility. Oh, man. So we'll see what happens. So we'll just talk fast and maybe we can get through it before the power. Quick, you hear splashing? Yeah. And that's it. If you hear splashing, I might be sitting on a floaty here in a minute, but real quick, we want to say go over to patreon.com slash graveyard tales sign up to become a patron. We've got three different levels that you can join. We think that all of them are a good deal. They're a good value for your money. You can skip as a lot of people have said, I didn't make this up. I'm just copying all the other people that seem to have more patrons than we do. So that's why I'm saying it. Skip a cup of coffee and go go get you go get yourself a patreon membership for us. But like I said, we have three different levels. We have a one five and a 10. All levels get a bonus episode a week. It's a shorter version of a graveyard tales episode. Normally, we will do something that doesn't have enough info to make a full graveyard tales episode, or we'll see an article that pertains to something along the lines of graveyard tales and we'll put it out there on patreon. So everybody gets that every week. Then our five and $10 every week get an ad free audio and video version of the main episode if we have an ad that week. So if you like the show, don't like the ads, five and $10 levels of patron will get you ad free. Then if you move on to the $10 a month, we have all of that plus our $10 a month get our second show side quest. And that's a different kind of a different take on me and Matt, if you would. It's like if you were hanging out with me and Matt in Matt's living room. It's you know, we're trying to make the other one laugh. We're we're talking about random goofy stuff. We're a little less censored on there. We don't censor ourselves like we do on graveyard tales. So it's like hanging out with us. And you can hear a funny story, get some maybe personal insight into me and Matt more than you would on graveyard tales. And we're enjoying doing it because it's it's totally different for us. And if you can believe it, Matt, we've done over 100 episodes. I know that's crazy. Side quest. That is crazy to me. It doesn't feel like we've done it for that long, but no, no, it really doesn't. But if you don't want to do all that and you still want to help us out, go check out our sponsors. You can find their links in our show notes. And if you use that code or the vanity link that we've got in the show notes, it will show that company that you heard about them from us. And between Patreon and our sponsors, that's what allows me and Matt to keep doing graveyard tales and keeping it ad free. Because we said from the beginning, graveyard tales will not go behind the paywall. And the only way we're allowed to do that is through our sponsors and our patrons. So we thank you all very much for doing that. Now, on that note, Matt, I'm bloviated enough in the beginning of this episode. So why don't you tell us you don't you like that word? I like that word that just popped into my head for some reason. But why don't you tell us what are we talking about tonight, brother? All right. So tonight, we are headed deep into the Australian outback. Oh, yeah. And when I mean deep, I don't mean like, oh, no, my GPS lost its signal. Okay, I mean, like red dirt, endless scrub, cattle stations, the size of small countries, saltwater crocodiles that look at you like you're Uber eats, man. And a landscape that is so ancient, it makes the pyramids in Egypt look like Ikea furniture. Right. Right. But somewhere out there. I allegedly there is something big walking around. And I'm not talking about a ridiculously large kangaroo. Okay. I'm talking about the burringer. And if you've if you've never heard of the burringer, there's probably a good reason. Okay, but this thing is pretty, it's pretty unique. It's it's a little bit different than any other cryptid we've done. Namely because of its resemblance to a dinosaur that we all know and love. Yep. Yep. And you're going to find out more about that when when Adam gets to talking about the description of this thing. I mean, it's like, well, you know, the scene in Jurassic Park, when they're when they're sitting in the cars, and they're they're waiting around, and they see the the water rippling in the cup. Yeah, because something is shaking the ground. It's walking up. Yep. This is kind of what we're talking about. Okay. So right, right. So let's let's not wait. I mean, we got we got a lot to cover. Let's get into it. We're going to talk about the burringer. Alright, so as we always say, go check our sources down at the bottom of the show notes, you can find where we found all this information. Everything we talk about is sourced and referenced there in our show notes. So you can see that we're telling you what our sources told us. Now burringer, I told Matt before we we started this burringer sounds like a mispronunciation of my last name. Yeah, it does. So Adam burringer. And if I get tweets now that say Adam burringer, I'm going to be upset. I'm going to I'm going to make a burringer with Adam's head on it. That would be funny. If you do that, it may end up being one of our thumbnails. That may be what it is. Now the name burringer, it's used today for a giant predatory quote, thunder lizard. I love that. I love thunder lizard. Yep. Yep. And it said to be six to seven meters, or around 20 to 25 feet long. Yeah, it walks on two legs. It's got a long tail and a large head. Its teeth are supposedly really sharp, and it has small clawed forelimbs. So what does that sound like? Yeah, modern day descriptions explicitly sound like a tyrannosaurus. Yeah, or another large theropod. Yeah, from that time period. And like Matt said, it's roaming the Australian outback. You know what's funny? You mentioned that this thing had really sharp teeth. Rarely ever do we hear about cryptids that have like ridiculously blunt teeth. That's true. I'm like, why not? You know, let's let's have some blunt teeth in here. Like those like those fish that have human looking teeth. Oh, God, yeah, that's creepy. Right, right. So now we need a we need a t-rex that looks like it's wearing dentures. There's another AI photo to generate. Now, accounts that they range from, you know, cryptid sites and folklore write ups and everything, they tend to agree on a few core features about the burringer. Like I said, it's around six to seven meters or 20 to 25 feet long. And its estimated weight is several tons. So think about like two, two of my pickups. Yeah, right, put together. That that's how how much this thing is supposed supposed to weigh. So you can see why it would shake the ground. Yes. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you drop my truck, it would shake the ground. Now drop two of them. And it's really going to shake the ground. It might it might shake the flagpole off your house. Now, it's strictly bipedal. It does not ever drop down on all fours. And it said to leave three toad or tridactyl footprints that they're said to be two to three feet across. Think about that's not length. That's from side to side, two to three feet from side to side. And the the tridactyl footprint has led to people giving it the name old three toes in some regions. I mean, it's a very unique name for this thing. I don't know how they came up with that for a three toad footprint to call it old three toes, but they did. Now it has a giant reptilian body, a long heavy tail and a large head with sharp teeth, like I said, and the small clawed hands on the front are reminiscent of all the theropod dinosaurs that we have fossils of. So just think of the the little T-Rex arms that right, that's what it looks like big imposing dinosaur and then it comes up to you and goes, eh, with its little arms smacking at you. Yeah. And I just picture them as they're running for some reason. The arms doing this as they're running like it's actually trying to like humans run with their arms swinging, but it's got little bitty arms. So they just got a flap. Yeah, yeah, which that goes down a whole nother the flapping wing thing that goes down another aisle. We don't need to go down. But some sources say that early aboriginal descriptions include a feather reptile, which links some scientific ideas about the theropods having feathers. But in a little bit, I'll mention the aboriginal thing. But most burringer narratives place it in remote parts of northern and central Australia, particularly the northern territory. The regions that have mentioned old three toes is the Arnhem land areas around the MacArthur River and the broader outback along what they call lonely roads like Stewart Highway. So that means nothing to me in Texas. So I know we have a bunch of listeners in Australia and New Zealand. So if y'all know these areas, hop in our Facebook group or something and describe these areas to us or send us pictures or something. So our listeners can get a good idea of that area. But the burringer is said to prey on kangaroos and other large animals. And in more recent tails, it's said to steal cattle and camels out of farmers' lands that it comes into. So it's interesting to me that the prey seems to be evolving as humans start adapting the land. You know, it's not just sticking with just kangaroos. It's like, well, there's a, there's old Bessie over there. She looks tasty. So I'll go get old Bessie. Now, some retellings claim that aboriginal people can identify particular tracks of country as burringer territory and that other large animals avoid these areas supposedly because of this giant apex predator. Okay. So where, where do we begin? We're looking at Biddy, Biddy Adanga. First try, which is a remote aboriginal community south of Broome in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. An educationalist named Frankie Shoveler. I love that name because- That is a fantastic name. Yeah, it sounds like a man whose fate is to go find things in the sand. Yeah, an archaeologist or something. Yeah. So he found something odd on the beach. Huge tracks and, and not tracks like, oh, that's a great big dog track. He found like, that's an emu that's, doesn't skip leg day tracks. Okay. Now we're talking giant, three-toed, sauren tracks pressed into wet coastal sand. Okay. And so Frankie filmed them and the video, which you can still go see, made its way to YouTube. All you have to do is search up footprints in the sand by Palm TV, POM TV. And when people started seeing this video, theories just started exploding. Okay. Was it a giant emu? Okay. Is it a seam monster? Okay. Is on the beach, did something crawl out of the ocean? Yeah. Is it a dinosaur? Okay. Or the logical explanation. Is it somebody fooling around with like, some fancy garden tools or something, you know, just making these weird giant three-toed shapes in the sand? So I mean, all of that and everything in between came out after people started seeing this video. But apparently these tracks caused such a stir that multiple groups went out throughout the day to see them for themselves. Because, you know, nothing breaks people together than like, a dinosaur walking around your neighborhood. Right. You want to get people together, have weird footprints. People are coming out to look at that. Yeah. You're exactly right. Just make a weird footprint. Okay. Make it and then just go start stamping it around your neighborhood and see what happens. You know, you are going to bring your neighbors together. I promise. Exactly right. You know, so give it a shot. You know, you wonder if you, why you've never met your neighbors. Go stamp some giant footprints in their yard and see what happens. You want to talk to that cute neighbor that you've never had the guts to go over and knock on their door and talk to them. Yeah. Make some weird footprints and then just be out there looking at it one day when they're coming home. Yeah. Just make sure they're not like two Nike footprints right outside her bedroom window. Okay. A valid point. Those, those kind of footprints will get you some attention too. You'll be talking to another group of people, but it won't be them. But here's where things get a little interesting. Okay. Among the Aboriginal communities, stories of this massive reptilian creature called the burranger have circulated for generations, supposedly. Not decades, not just since the invention of YouTube, generations. Okay. And as I said, the descriptions are pretty specific. Like, like Adam said, 25 to 30 feet tall, walking upright on these huge, powerful hind legs, too small, pretty much useless front looking limbs and mostly reptilian in appearance. Now, you don't want to jump to conclusions, but like Adam said, this sounds like a T-Rex. Yep. So you don't want to jump to conclusions, but you will jump to conclusions. You absolutely will. I mean, because what, I mean, what else are you going to think? You know, you, you hear that description. That's the first thing that pops into your head and you're like, wait a minute. People saw a T-Rex walking around. Are you kidding? Yeah. I mean, that's what they say. Now, these creatures are said to roam across the Gulf country and Cape York, they're remote. Okay. They're out in the wild, these vast areas. And this is exactly where you would think that a 30 foot lizard could live and not be noticed. Okay. Right. There's, there's no major highways out there. There's no KFC. You know, there's, there's nothing, nothing. You know, it's not like you're going to be, you know, waiting on your order at Jimmy John's and go look up and go, hey, check out that T-Rex walking down the road. It's not. It's, I mean, we are talking about remote. Yep. Very rare that there are humans in that area. Yeah. Yeah. But more importantly, the stories aren't just confined to the oral folklore. Okay. You have, you have cattlemen out there, explorers, just people that, you know, like to get out in the wild, you know, travelers, bushmen, you know, there are plenty of non-aboriginal witnesses that have reported encounters with the burringer. So let's talk about some of those. 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In 1950, cattlemen began losing livestock along a stretch from the border country to Burktown in Queensland. And these carcasses weren't clean kill. So it wasn't like there was humans out there taking out people's cattle. Okay, these things were like half eaten. Yeah, they had obviously been dragged. And they were left in a pattern, which is even stranger, like something was moving through the region and grabbing a snack as it went along. Okay. Like, you know, Adam was talking about it. It's not necessarily a hunter. It's more along the lines of eating opportunistically. Okay, I'm trucking along. And hey, look at that. Look at that big thing. I bet that tastes pretty good. Munch. It's good. You know, you keep going. Hey, there's another one of them things. Munch, you know, that was tasty last time. That's right. And so they're just, they're like something came through here and just decided it was going to grab a cow. Okay. Now, search parties formed after seeing this because they thought, okay, we got to figure out what's what's taken out our cattle because this is, you know, this is affecting our livelihood. But it was also mildly terrifying that there was something large enough to do this much damage to cattle. So men set out on horseback to investigate and they found something huge three-toed tracks. Okay. And they were two to three feet wide. Okay. Two to three feet wide. Yep. Think that shocked me when I saw that in my notes. I, it, you think length two to three feet? No, this is left to right. Yeah. Two to three feet wide. Just picture in your head how big three feet is. I mean, I'm six foot tall. That's half, half of me would be the width of this foot. Yeah. Okay. That's that's crazy. So if mildly terrifying, yeah. If both feet were standing next to one another, that would be as I could lay down across them and that would be the same height. It would be a new. Yes, that's right. And one thing that these guys knew for sure is this was not a gawana, which is common. And, you know, a gawana is a large monitor lizard, but nowhere near this size. And they said, well, it's not a kangaroo either. You know, we know how big kangaroo can get. We know how big their feet are. This isn't a kangaroo. And it's, you know, it's not some joker down the road wearing these funny slippers, you know, that, you know, these are way too big for any of that to be the case. So they followed these tracks through the jungle into a swamp. And this is one of the coolest details about it. When they reached the swamp, the cattle dogs and horses refused to go any further. They just said, yeah, no, wrong. This is as far as I go. If you want to go, you have fun with that. We're going to stay right here. That's self preservation is what that is. I don't care how much of a tough guy you think you are, but when your horse says, nope, not going any further, you should listen. Yes, 100%. 100%. So most of the men turned back, you know, wisely, but wisely, but to really brave guys, or maybe just really, really stubborn. Yeah, there's a fine line pressed on on foot. And when they reached an OPI, an OPI, an open, swampy clearing, one of them saw it. A massive reptilian creature around 30 feet long standing in the timber. 30 feet. Okay. They did not try to talk to it. They didn't try to measure it. They didn't try to capture it. You know, and they did exactly what I would have done. They got the hell out of there. Yep. They pood themselves and ran away. And, you know, that was probably the smartest decision they could have made. Okay. Yep. But they saw it. They saw it. They saw the tracks. And then they saw the creature and were just shocked. I mean, just think about it. You walk up and you see basically a dinosaur standing out there. It'd be like that scene in Jurassic Park when Dr. Grant and Ellie Sadler, you know, they look up. Dr. Grant sees it and then he grabs Ellie's head and like turns, turns like look, when you look at what this is, I can see that. Look, look at this. Okay. Now we need to go. Yep. Dude reaches over and grabs his buddy's head and turns it slowly to the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Like check this out. Because I mean, the first thing I'm doing is, are you seeing the same thing that I'm seeing? Right. Because I see a dinosaur. Yeah. Am I, am I hallucinating? Yeah. Right. What's going on? You know, the heat is getting to me because I think I see a T-Rex standing there. Right. So in 1961, a part Aboriginal tracker named Johnny Matthews. Yeah, it didn't sound like an Aboriginal name. You know, Johnny Matthews. Maybe it is. I don't know. I just thought that that sounds like a, I need a name for this character. How about Johnny Matthews? Yeah. This is like straight as you could get. But it is. There's a lot of Aboriginal names that are that way they take when the Europeans moved in, they took them and well, I can't pronounce your name. So, oh, well, see, I learned something new every day. I didn't realize that. Yep. I'm going to give you this name and then. See, I was thinking that it would be a name I couldn't pronounce. And it would have been. Oh, okay. If they weren't using the Europeanized name. Well, then I am very appreciative of Johnny Matthews' name. But so, Johnny reported seeing a 25 foot bipedal reptile moving through scrub near Lagoon Creek on the Gulf Coast. And and he described what he saw. He said, hardly anyone outside my own people believe my story, but I know what I saw. And, you know, that that carries a little bit of weight. Okay. And, you know, his description matches exactly what those guys saw back in the 50s when they rocked walked up through that swamp and saw what reminded them of a T-Rex. Because even if it's misidentification or the influence of folklore or something that is absolutely unexplainable, Johnny Matthews was convinced, you know, that he saw a giant reptilian creature. Yeah. Yep. Now, let's fast forward to the 1970s. Northern Territory Bushman and Explorer Brian Clark. Okay, this makes a lot more sense now. Okay, these these names. Okay. He was mustering cattle in the Urepojie area when he got lost for three days. Lost. This doesn't sound like an area that you really want to get lost in. No. No. And it's 1970. So he didn't have a GPS, you know, he didn't have a Magellan, you know, that he could, you know, he didn't have one of those those Garmin that these, you know, wilderness hikers use. He didn't have none of that. He maybe had a map and he might not have had that. Okay. Yeah. And getting lost here is very detrimental to your health. Yeah, absolutely. So if you're lost in the Australian app back, you're, you're basically playing Survivor. Okay, the home, the home game. Okay, but unbeknownst to him, two aboriginal trackers and a mounted policeman were searching for him. And on the first night of their search, they camped near Scrubland. After dinner, they settled in and they heard the normal noises that you hear out in the bush. The policeman woke up to shouting because the trackers were panicking. That's not a normal bush sound. Yeah, right. I would think. Yeah, I've never been. I've never been, but I would think two, two aboriginal trackers shouting and panicking is not a normal sound. Or at least I hope it's not. You bring them because they wouldn't freak out. They're used to the outback. You make a great point. Okay. If, if, if you're, if you've got a guide that is from that area, if they freak out, you should really freak out. Okay. Because they know what's out there. If they come across something they don't know how to deal with, you need to be gone. Yeah, you should have already been running if they're freaking out. Right. Okay. And so he, he heard this, this really deep huffing noise and the ground was shaking. Okay. Shaking. They didn't stick around to investigate. They gathered their gear and they took off. Now later, the policeman warned Brian, if you get lost out there again, you're on your own. I'm not going back. And that don't blame him. That's not really the type of thing that law enforcement says, unless no, something really unsettling happened. Yep. I don't blame him, but you're right. That's normally the law enforcement. Normally they're like, oh, okay. They're normally like, go get them again. You really need to be careful. Okay. Don't, don't get out. You're, you're gonna wind up, we may not be able to find you. You know, you, you could really get yourself in a lot of trouble. You could get killed out here. You know, no, this guy says, if you do this again, I'm not coming. You know, you can forget it. Cause whatever out, whatever was out there, it scared the bejesus out of him. He said, yeah, sorry, ain't going. Now let's, let's move up to 1985. And in 1985, the ASCII family, which is a family, a family of four, were traveling toward Roper River mission and they took a side road to go sightseeing. And that always is great, especially like in horror movies. You know, hey, let's go sightseeing. Yeah, it turns out perfectly fine. This is never a good idea, especially out in the Devin Bush. And why are you getting off the main track in the Bush? You barely have a main track. I know it wasn't that long ago that the police told Brian Clark, we're not coming back if you do this again. And now here, this whole family, hey, let's go over here. You know, well, that's people that not used to the bush. And so they just, they're like, oh, well, let's go this way, not just ignorant to the danger. There needs to be a sign that says, if you get lost out here, the police are not coming to look for you. Okay. You're on your own. But as they were turning around, they saw two creatures on the plane, two of them. They said they were bipedal. They were grayish brown and they were dinosaur like. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't get any planer than that. You know, but they didn't stop to try to take any photos and good. They resumed their journey at the maximum possible speed. Okay. They got on. And, and, you know, to be honest, so would I. I would do the exact same thing. Now, let's, let's talk a little bit about the tracks. Now, over the years, there have been multiple three towed tracks that not only have been photographed, but they've also been cast. They're always similar. They're always enormous. And they're always about two to three feet wide. So the most popular theory, it's not a surviving Tyrannosaur. I know that we all want it to be, but it is not. It's a giant monitor lizard, which brings us to one of the most fascinating prehistoric reptiles to ever exist. Okay. The, the megalania. Now, the scientific name for the megalania is the Varanus. Is it, is it Priscus or Priscus? Yeah, I think it's a Varanus Priscus. Priscus. That's okay. The SC threw me off. Varanus Priscus. Now, the thing to remember is this creature was real. Okay. There is no debate here. It was real. It lived in Australia during the Pleistocene period. Yep. And it grew to links estimated between 18 to possibly over 23 feet long with some people speculating that it got bigger than this. I would assume it probably did, but it weighed by estimates over a thousand pounds. It was the largest terrestrial lizard known to science and it went extinct around 23,000 years ago. Now that is a very interesting number. 23,000 years ago. And the reason it's interesting is because it means that it overlapped with humans. Right. Early Australians absolutely could have encountered the megalania. And some researchers even believe human expansion contributed to its extinction. And it may have been too slow to outrun a coordinated group of human hunters. Okay. I mean, you see the movies and you watch a T-Rex or a T-Rex-like dinosaur move and they're very swift. You know, they're running down, you know, that scene in the original Jurassic Park where they're all running and they've got those ostrich looking dinosaurs running with them. And then just out of the blue, here comes a T-Rex from the side and he just snatches one up. Okay. I mean, that thing is moving fast and it's moving quick. But in reality, a giant lizard that weighed near a thousand pounds probably was not that quick. And so they, they, they began to speculate that if humans were around, and this thing could have possibly been a threat or even a food source, that a group of hunters could have probably, you know, flanked it and been successful. So that's why they think that humans may have led to the megalania's extinction. It's possible that it could have just lost its prey as the megafauna disappeared. You know, there, there was the huge, you know, jungle plants and trees and everything that would have been the home to much larger animals that would have been prey for the megalania. And as that fauna disappeared, so did those prey animals and thus eventually the megalania because it didn't have anything to eat. But here's where things get a little, you know, wonky. Fossils of the megalania are rare and I mean very rare. So what if a small population retreated into dense unexplored forest and valleys? And Australia has vast regions that are still very sparsely surveyed. And fossilization is rare in human forest environments. So let's, let's consider another, another creature, the sila canth. Okay. They thought it was extinct for 66 million years until one showed up in 1938, like, hey, what y'all doing? Mm hmm. So megalania would actually benefit from forest cover. Okay. Large body, slow speed, sprawling gate. I mean, it would have been an ambush predator. You know, just laying low, something comes close. Bam. Okay. And modern monitor lizards can rear up briefly on hind legs. It's not something that you typically see them do. And, you know, Adam and I just, just about a week ago, you know, talked quite a bit about Komodo dragons. So, you know, we talk about large monitor lizards, they can come up with those little front feet that would resemble little useless arms. And again, if big enough, you know, and terrifying enough, you wouldn't stick around to get a really close look to go, oh, it just went right back down on its front feet. No, you were turning around running. Okay. Because it was mildly terrifying. So scale that up a little bit, make this, make a regular monitor lizard a little bit bigger, add a little bit of myth and folklore and isolation. And now you can start seeing how the burringer becomes plausible, at least biologically, if you're willing to stretch out the extinction timelines. Right. Right. And, yeah, like we were talking, talking about the Aborigines didn't have a bunch of descriptions for the burringer, but they do for the megalangu. Yeah. Yeah. And across many language groups, stories feature these enormous goannas or monitor lizards, or they call them dragon like reptiles. And they're told, the stories are told about them terrorizing people, eating humans or animals, and they just dominate the landscape. So, like Matt was saying, this seems to be stories that people experienced, not just folklore. This is stories that they watched it happen, you know, or their grandparents watched it happen and it got told down. So these stories involve an animal that's much closer to oversized monitor lizards than to a bipedal theropod. Yeah. Yeah. And forgive me for the pronunciation, but in Yuwa Lare Lour, the mangun golly is a giant goanna and it attacks people with a venomous bite and an insatiable appetite until other beings steal its quote poison bag and then it shift the venom to snakes. Yeah. So that's where, apparently, they, snakes got their venom and this giant lizard didn't. But other regional traditions talk about monstrous lizards and they're huge, often multi-limbed or oddly shaped reptilian creatures. Now, these beings, they're quadripetal and they're described as giant goannas or dragons, not the upright T-Rex like bipeds, like the Borenger. They're embedded in specific dreaming stories, totem systems and moral landscape narratives rather than framed as a living dinosaur. But the megalenium, we know existed and it's now usually called the Varanus Priscus, like Matt said. It was a giant monitor lizard from Pleistocene, Australia. And I can't get over the fact, I've got it written down too, that it was the largest land-dwelling lizard ever known. I know. That's insane to me, that I know things got larger in the Pleistocene due to what they say is more oxygen in the environment and bigger fauna and flora and stuff, but it just, it blows my mind. It just blows my mind. Now, the original name for it was megalenia prisca or the ancient great roamer. Now, it's treated as the Varanus Priscus, which is part of the monitor lizard group that includes the Komodo dragon that we talked about. And it appears to have survived till just after the arrival of humans in Australia, like Matt was talking about. So it means people encountered it. And it was known to, or they're known to find fossils in primarily eastern Australia, Darling Downs in Queensland, but it probably inhabited open woodlands, forest and grasslands as the apex predator. And the older estimates gave a length of up to about seven meters or 23 feet. But more recent works suggest something more like 16 to 18 feet is more realistic. But like we said, I believe these things got huge. I mean, the 23 feet probably seems, that seems like it would be an average size. Yeah, I think it's conservative for sure. I mean, like you said, you know, there was a time when the atmosphere was more oxygen rich than it is now that that rich oxygen led to larger life forms. Yep. And, you know, just based on and as Adam said, we mentioned earlier, these fossils are rare. So it's not like we have a huge database to pull from to estimate the size of these creatures. So there's a really good chance there were some that were way, way bigger than this. For sure. And it, you know, it was described as a heavily built monitor lizard with a thick body, robust limbs, and looking like a scaled up Komodo dragon. And modern estimates say it weighed around 1000 to 1300 pounds. They say making it comparable in mass to large bear. But this is the smaller end that they're talking about. So obviously, if it got bigger, then you could have something, you know, a ton, ton and a half in weight, it looking like a giant monitor lizard, scare the crap out of you if you saw it in the outback. It had serrated teeth similar to the Komodo dragons, a strong tail, powerful claws, and it probably held its body in a low sprawling monitor lizard position. So you've you see them with their legs kind of spread out belly close to the ground, that's more how it would run. It was considered to be one of the top terrestrial predators of the ecosystem. And it likely hunted large marsupials like giant kangaroos and other sizable animals, as well as smaller mammals, reptiles and birds. And I keep comparing it to the Komodo dragon, but it's because it's the closest thing we have to it. It would also like the Komodo dragon take deer and pigs. So opportunistic feeder, it would take what it could get, which that sounds like the stories of the burringer. To me, opportunistic feeder, it's going to take down these whatever it can get its hands on. But like I mentioned venom earlier, because there was some venom mentioned in aboriginal dream time stories, they say since living large verandids like the Komodo dragon have a venomous bite, a lot of researchers infer that megalania probably did as well, combining venom serrated teeth and a bacterial overload to weaken its prey. So hunting down through all this, I came across a redditor that had an encounter with a very large lizard. Now, this is a modern day encounter. Okay. And this redditor, his, his reddit name is Bardic Innovation. I don't know, reddit names are crazy. Yeah. But he, he posted this encounter a year ago. But he says that the encounter occurred 17 years ago, which, okay, so it's still in the 2010s, you know, right around 2000, I guess 2009, 2010. So he says 17 years ago, I was driving very late on a Friday night, Saturday morning, roughly 2am, through forestry roads in one of Queensland's Fraser Coast State Forest. He says I had finished a 10 hour shift at the pub that I worked at, and I was driving 45 minutes out to stay the night with my girlfriend. Now I was very tired and that could have affected what I saw. Said I'm nothing if not a skeptical and logical person and will not embellish factors that could alter the credibility. I was nearing a bend in the road, hugged by the forest on either side, and I slammed my brakes because something was covering the road. He says it was a big ass Gawanna tip to tail as long as the road was wide. And all my tired brain thought was, wow, that is a big Gawanna. That sounds like a sleepy thing. I honked my horn and revved my engine and it crawled off the road and I drove on. He said days went by and Sunday morning I was leaving to go back home. Said I drove through the road where I saw the big Gawanna and had to stop and you turn back to the location. The road was at least three meters wide. So I was quite dumbfounded. I realize if it was a megalania, it was a smaller one. But the counterpoint, Gawanna is in that region, get about one and a half meters long max. So no crocodile sightings in that specific location either. It looked, moved, and held itself just like a Gawanna does. He says is it plausible that megalania did survive? But much like with most species, when its main food source becomes scarce, it evolves to be smaller, making an offshoot species. He's like plenty of dingos, wild boars, and kangaroos in the area, big enough to feed a large meat eater. But much like myself initially, maybe people shrug sightings off as just a big Gawanna. So, you know, what he's basically saying is whatever he saw was either the biggest Gawanna he had ever heard of, much less seen, or a smaller megalania that could have survived and gradually evolved to be smaller as its primary prey got smaller. Okay? You know what that story reminded me of? When he was talking about it and talking about, could it be a larger version of the Gawanna we have now or megalania? It reminded me of the Yaku mama that we talked about. Oh yeah! Yeah! So again, this is an animal that is larger than most species that we know about and it resembles the species, just a scaled up version of it. So why would it be any different? Of this megalania could have evolved like he said or the Gawannas could have evolved, but it's more likely that a megalania would scale down than a Gawanna scaling up due to the prey that's there. Yeah. And I think, you know, it reminded me of when we talked about the Yaku mama, could it be an actual species, an actual version of this animal that we know about? It's just in such small population that we don't see it often at all and science doesn't take it seriously yet. And for those of you that maybe haven't heard that episode and are going, what is a Yaku mama? The Yaku mama is a much, much, much, much bigger anaconda in the Amazonry. Okay. And just like with the megalania, we know that larger species of anaconda existed. But are they still around? And right, much like the Australian outback, the Amazon, you know, it's, it's just not been explored extensively because it's not only is it so dense and large and difficult for humans to explore, it's dangerous as hell. Oh, very much. So getting out there in search of a gigantic anaconda, you know, that's really difficult to do. Much like our buddy, Brian Clark, who got lost out in the bush, also not the easiest or safest thing to do. So again, you know, you make a great comparison there. We're talking about a remote area, not just overly explored, you know, not just covered up with humans that one of these species could have managed to find a way to survive and evolve. Yeah. You know, and we're not necessarily talking about, and I hate that about these stories is because the idea is that a dinosaur survived into the modern day exactly how it was, you know, in its period. Well, I mean, no other animals do that. So why would we expect dinosaurs to do that? You know, why couldn't they evolve as well and adapt to their surroundings, adapt to their food source? And, you know, especially with the idea that megalania when extinct 23,000 years ago, that's pretty recent when we talk about, you know, dinosaurs, you know. So it. Yeah, because most scientists put other ones at nil. Yeah, exactly. So so it it does sound at least on the surface that it's a possibility. But as with any other kind of, you know, cryptid or or evolved dinosaur or, you know, leftover species that managed to hang around, you get a little bit of controversy. Oh, sure. So enter Rex Gilroy. Now, Rex is the most controversial figure in this entire story. Okay. He is like a living, breathing controversy. Now, Gilroy was an Australian paranormal researcher and cryptozoologist who claimed to have investigated the Burringer extensively. He reported dozens of giant reptilian footprints across Australia. He made casts. He published books. He promoted the theory that dinosaurs survived in the outback. He even claimed to have found Aboriginal pictographs of dinosaurs, which, you know, again goes to this idea where humans and dinosaurs didn't really hang out together. Supposedly. But, you know, he says he found these cave drawings that prove that they did. But here's the problem. And a lot of researchers point this out. None of Gilroy's Burringer accounts appear in contemporaneous newspaper archives. There's no other no other documentation of it. Many key witnesses cannot be independently verified. And the term Burringer itself does not appear in Aboriginal cosmology outside of Rex Gilroy's work. Right. Right. Now, in in Arnhem land cosmology, Burringer actually refers to a trickster demigod figure, not a dinosaur. And and the which yeah, go ahead. I mean, if it's a trickster demigod, couldn't it shape shift into a dinosaur? I guess so. You know, I mean, just thinking it. And we hear about tricksters in Native American folklore that shapeshift. So ladies and gentlemen, the Australian skinwalker. Okay. Yeah, there you go. But but what, you know, I like that idea. I didn't consider that at all until you just said it. But I like I like that idea. But what about those cave paintings, you know, critics say that they are stylistically inconsistent with genuine Aboriginal rock art. Okay. That's a nice that's a nice way of saying it's BS. Okay. Forgery. Some claim that they look suspiciously modern, possibly even chalk. Go look them up. You you I'm not going to tell you. Go look them up yourself. Rex Gilroy, Burranger cave drawings. And you I'm looking at you be the judge. And, you know, you tell me if you think there was a box of crayola chalk and Rex Gilroy's pocket. But there's the footprint issue. Okay. When when researchers compare Gilroy's casts to authentic dinosaur tracks or authentic. Oh, he just found a. I did. Yeah, that looks like a kid with sidewalks. Yeah, yeah. So which I'm gonna get into my opinion on this in a minute. But yeah, I'll just I won't. But but the footprints so so you know, like when they compare these cast to authentic dinosaur tracks or authentic monitor lizard prints, they don't match. They are overly simple. Three flat toes, minimal anatomical detail. Almost if someone made a crude mold of a three towed foot and shoved it into soft soil. And perhaps the the most damning of Gilroy's research is he never produced any long trackway photographs. Okay, like it's always a single footprint. It's not yeah, multiples. Okay. So it's a one legged hopping. Burranger boing boing. It's cubert. Okay. That's bouncing along one leg. Okay. And it has a really long stride. And a lot of people speculate that the reason that he hasn't done any long trackway photographs is because creating a full consistent trackway would be extremely difficult to fake. Yeah. Okay. If you're going to mimic, you know, the the a path, okay, that a creature would have walked. Okay. A creature that you're estimating how big it was. Okay. Even even for the witnesses, they are estimating how big this thing is. To get the stride right, to get the pressure right, and to do that multiple times to produce what another research, an outside researcher could go, well, this is consistent with other things that we know. That's tough. That's really, really tough. And and you said the pressure, that's true. Because if when you walk, any creature walks, there's a flexing and bending of the foot. Yeah. So you would have to be able to get that into the soil to make it believable. Yeah. And especially if we're talking about a three-toed animal. I mean, with three toes, you know, that, every all the parts of that foot are and those toes are going to be involved in that gait pattern. It's not going to be like humans with a pinky toe hanging out there going along for the ride. All three of those toes are going to be involved in maintaining a creature of this size balance, especially if it's bipedal. Okay. Yeah. So that's that's going to be really, really difficult. So creating a single impression is much, much easier. So is it Gilroy just it was just a passionate believer or an overzealous researcher, you know, confirmation bias. I want this to be I'm convinced that this is real. And I want it to be real. So I influence my own research by wanting it to be real so bad. Or is it something else? You know, the Burringer legend as we know it today largely comes from Rex Gilroy. And yet independent reports of giant reptiles in Australia do exist outside of his work. So we really are kind of wading into a weird crypto zoological gray area. Okay. Yeah. And this was what I said. This is my opinion. People that do this kind of stuff, they they undercut the actual research and evidence of other people. So I remember hearing this, I was listening to a podcast about it. I think it was like Dateline or something. Anyway, it was a court case and they were like the the attorney was saying he said one of the things you have to do. He said when you're you're you're trying to portray a witness as being untruthful, he goes, you don't have to prove that they're lying about what they're testifying about. You just have to show that they're lying about anything, something. Right. Because if they're lying about one thing, they could be lying about this. And that's what happens here. Oh, yeah. So if if he made this up, it ruins all the rest of his research, no matter how valid it may be, along with everyone else's. And we've talked about that with the Bigfoot case. Oh, yeah. People that that falsify Bigfoot encounters just undermine all of the legit sightings. And you and I have railed against that for a while. But these hoaxers that are intentionally trying to trick people totally screw up our look into these animals. Because it's exactly like you were saying with the witness. The the people who are dead set against there being a large monitor lizard in Australia, they don't have to at all say anything about the more legitimate sightings. All they need to do is go look at this dude over here who faked this one. Yeah. And from that point on, everybody who hears it and has no other opinions about it go, oh, well, yeah, that's exactly. I mean, this one guy faked it. It's the the the patty stuff. Patterson Gellin. There have been recent things that came out that it is not a falsified video. But because some dude who got the name Bigfoot started walked around with fake fake feet in the thing. And they go, Oh, well, see, this these weren't real print. So none of it. Exactly. Exactly. It really? Yeah. It just completely ruins it for everybody. So understanding all that and and looking at it through that lens, you know, what what do we really think this could be? Okay, there are like, you know, we covered, you know, a good four or five sightings across about a 50 year span, you know, believe these people are don't there's evidence that whatever they saw it completely terrified them. So is it a surviving T Rex? Biologically, that is almost impossible. It's it's the wrong ecosystem. It's the wrong prey, the wrong atmospheric conditions. So that is highly doubtful. Could it be a relic population of giant monitor lizards? Now, that is much more plausible. Because Australia still has enormous parenting, parentee lizards that reach over eight feet long. So you scale that up historically, like we said, increased oxygen, larger, you know, larger animals, larger prey. Okay. You do that and you're halfway to megalania. Okay. Yeah. But 25 to 30 feet and bipedal. That's, that's where it begins to really stretch. Now, unless these eyewitnesses are exaggerating the size, which humans absolutely do when they're frightened, a 12 foot lizard seen in tall grass can quickly become 25 feet in memory. Okay. When you think back and you're scared, it was humongous. Okay. That that rat snake that I killed, you know, several years ago was an anaconda when Amanda talks about it. I'm telling you. Right. And, and I love this fear stretches fear stretches tape measures. Okay. It just does. That's a good thing. This thing, this right here is, is fascinating. These reports cluster in remote regions, swamp lands, scrub flood plains, areas where visibility is poor and wildlife is already extreme. Okay. Even if it's not a T-rex walking around, the things that are out there are at far ends of the spectrum. Oh, yeah. And animals behave strangely. Horses refusing to move, dogs panicking. That detail repeats across a lot of cryptic cases all around the world. Okay. But does that prove anything? No. But it keeps the story alive. Okay. Yep. So the bigger question here is if something like megalania survived, it wouldn't need a massive breeding population if its territory was huge and Australia's interior is vast. But large apex predators usually leave clear ecological footprints like carcasses and scat and skeletal remains. But yet we have no verified body, no confirmed DNA, no high resolution footage. And in 2026, everyone carries a 4k camera in their pocket. But there's nothing definitive, but the stories persist. Tracks appear, they disappear, they reappear. And somewhere in the Gulf country or Cape York, someone is still telling their friend, you wouldn't believe what I saw. Okay. So is the burranger real? If you're thinking strictly zoologically, probably not as it's described. A 25 to 30 foot bipedal lizard similar to a T-rex, probably not. Is it possible that rare, unusually large monitor lizards roam remote Australia? Yeah, 100%. I mean, there's no doubt that that's a possibility. And is it possible that ancient human encounters with megalania shaped the folklore? Well, that's probably the most accurate thing out of this whole story. You know, myths tend to preserve memory. And if early Australians saw 20 foot predatory lizards, those stories would stick around for thousands of years. So until somebody captures one on film, or drags a 25 foot lizard into the wildlife office, or one walks in and says, I'd like to become a citizen, please. Something crazy. Right. We're gonna, we're gonna talk about it. We're gonna speculate. We're gonna debate. We're gonna tell these stories because the stories are amazing. And there might still be something out there. But what do you guys think? You know, is it possible? Is it possible? We don't think that that's a T-rex. So let's just slide that off a little bit. Is it possible that there is a giant monitor lizard that has persisted for thousands of years in the Australian outback? And it's still hanging around out there and that over the last 50, 60 years people have encountered it? You know, enough to be terrified to tell their friends. Yep. I'm totally on board. I am too. Because it is the right ecosystem, the right prey, everything for a large monitor lizard to be able to survive. And like we said, megalania could have evolved over thousands of years to become a little bit smaller. And to be able to keep up with the prey. Because again, the larger ones would die off quicker because they couldn't feed themselves. So the smaller ones would stay around because, oh, I got wild pig and kangaroo I can eat, but I don't have giant kangaroo anymore. Yeah. So it would make sense that that would happen. And then they would be just enough, like there'd be just enough of them to keep a population going, but not enough to be seen everywhere like kangaroo because the food source is not there. You know, and I mean, but you're talking to a guy who I believe that the thylacine is still out there. I think there's, yeah, I think, in fact, I think there's more evidence that the thylacine is still around. 100%. I mean, it makes sense. And it's the same situation, you know, same location. You just, you can't possibly begin to explore all of the outback. I mean, you just can't do it. And could something like that stick around? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, honest, I think the Yakumama is still around. And it might not be the mythical Yakumama that people describe, but could it be a gigantic anaconda that's just lived for a really long time? Absolutely. You bet your butt it could be. You know, because I'm not going to go hunting for it. No. No, I'm going to leave that to the professionals and the crazy people. You know, kind of, you know, you talk about it when your prey gets smaller, you know, the predators get smaller. So it makes me wonder if McDonald's went out of business and we couldn't get a Big Mac and all we had was like crystal and white castles, would we all get a little smaller? I think so. We'd all become like maybe four foot tall. But tell then the crystal would look huge. Our hands would get smaller, you know, like Barbie hands. But tell us what do you guys think? And the best place to do this is in our Facebook group. It's called the graveyard. We have thousands of folks in there sharing stories just like this, opinions, asking for help, jokes. You name it. 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