First, rumors of a "terrestrial crocodile" reached Lieutenant Steyn van Hensbroek from the Dutch colonial administration (the Dutch East Indies was a Dutch colony consisting of areas of present-day Indonesia).
The lizard was first described in 1912 by the then-director of the Zoological Museum in Bogor, Java, Pieter Ouwens, who received photos and skin samples of an adult specimen from van Hensbroek, and two other specimens from a collector.
The first two live specimens came from Komodo to Europe to a zoo in London in 1927. Some of the earliest observations of these animals in captivity were made, and the findings were presented at the Symposium of the Zoological Society of London in 1928.
