ok, i got some info.
90 kilos is about 198 pounds, so i wasn’t off by too much, and that’s still in the range of human sizes. in fact, that’s about what i weigh.
Mekhazzio wrote, re The Flight of Dragons:
Hey, don’t knock it. It worked for John Varley in his Titan novels.
it’s still an unsavory idea. it really detracts from the elegance and appeal of a traditional dragon.
i think most would prefer that true physical dragons never existed rather than they be giant dirigibles.
but then, that is an opinion so it should probably be scratched from the record in the context of the debate.
Revtim, I think you may have mis-read the article you linked to. The specimen found at Big Bend “only” had an 18’ wingspan, not beak-to-tail length (this is the only reference to any length given for the animal in the article):
These relatively complete specimens were then used to extrapolate the size of the original specimen (comprised of only a wing bone) found by Lawson upwards to an animal with a 36’-39’ wingspan.
Having said that, Quetzalcoatlus was pretty damned big; unfortunately, about the only figures ever given for the size of this beast are its wingspan and (sometimes) its weight.
Curses. I was reading this thread just to bring up this book. Neat book. I’m not saying I believe it, or anything, but it sounded plausble to this layman.
FWIW, the animated movie of the same name is actually pretty good. The plot is taken, with some modifications, from Gordon Dickson’s light fantasy novel The Dragon and the George, where a modern human is accidentally transported into the body of a dragon in a fantasy world. It’s better than it sounds, really. The movie tacks on the “science” from Peter Dickinson’s book in a few scenes where the protagonist is learning how to be a dragon.
heh. now you know i’m gonna have to go off and muck through IMDB now, don’t ya? that looks interesting, and i liked that series of books, so…
i seriously need to check my friend’s sanity level. I think it may have been damaged since she read the first few chapters of The Dragonriders of Pern and chinese history class.
and one more thing, dragons, in crazy_nut’s case, are real in zodiac terms. i have therefore answered her questiona dn the rest of yours. 
Hey, saepiroth! I’d rather have dragons as giant floating blimps, than not have them exist at all! If Dickinson’s right, then there’s a slim chance someone might find the hide of one and be able to clone a dragon! (Oh, boy! Wouldn’t what’s his name who wrote Jurassic Park be up in a tizzy over that?)
yeah, i guess it would be better than nothing.
though, i’d rather have some more traditional dragons turn up in a cave in africa somewhere. i mean the intelligent kind, not just a deposit o’ dinosaurs, here. (though that would be really cool too.) {though giant, intelligent blimps would be better than dinosaurs, if not as good as intelligent traditional dragons} [damn, that’s a lot of out-of-contexts…]
Actually, of all the “spiritually” dragon people I’ve met, very, very few were significantly larger than human-sized. I can only think of one off the top of my head, in fact.
But yeah, the image of huge flying dragons with bird-sized-proportion wings is right out, barring supernatural/magical intervention…
i have wierd friends, then. oh well, thanks for the correction.
I tried to create some realistic ‘dragons’ in a setting for a couple of SF stories I never finished. Since they were genetically engineered from totally alien stock I wasn’t limited by terrestrial bone strength, their four wings were mostly extremely strong and light-weight grown crystal, creature’s wingspan was app. 50 feet, body length about 20 feet, and they massed around 200 lbs. The planet they existed on had about about 2/3 of Earth’s gravity and an atmosphere more than twice as thick at sea level though and the creatures could only fly clumsily without using their psionic powers.
There is another thoery about dragons held by some creationists that relates to the dragon/dinosaur thoery. Kent Hovind has an online RealVideo series dealing with it at http://www.drdino.com/cse.asp?pg=real_video
This is the thoery in a nutshell:
The dinosaur fossils found today are the fossils of larger dinosaurs killed in the biblical flood, which were able to grow to that size due to pre-flood atmospheric and environmental conditions. Dinosaurs were around after the flood, but were much smaller in size, and fewer in number. These dinosaurs were as well known to people as any other animal, and they were responsible (along with, perhaps, oral tradition of the much larger pre-flood variety) for the accounts of dragons in so many different cultures. The thoery goes on to state that these “dragons” were mainly wiped out by humans (thus the stigma of so many heroes of legend and folklore “slaying dragons”), and existed up until perhaps several hundred years ago, growing more rare all the while. All the while, they would have been known as “dragons”, as the term “dinosaur” didn’t exist until relatively recently. It is also believed that some dino-dragons might exist even today, accounting for sightings of Nessie and the like, and the Mokele-Mbembe of the congo.
While the merits of this thoery are a debate all in their own, I just wanted to bring it up in addition to the others. The videos on Kent Hovind’s site explain it much better and in far greater detail, and are rather interesting and enjoyable to watch, whether you believe them or not.
Aside from the general wackiness of the theory, one reason it fails is that dinosaurs of any sort look nothing like the two typical depictions of dragons: the “wurm” (slender, serpentine) and the “heraldic” (winged, fire-breathing). We have not found any winged dinosaurs (aside from the ones most people refer to as “birds”), nor have we found any serpentine types (though the necks and tails of sauropods, if found in isolation might qualify).
The fact that a) nobody seems to have ever drawn real dinosaurs that, if Hovind’s theory has any basis in reality, would have been readily observable, and b) the dragon depictions that people did draw look little, if anything, like dinosaurs as we know them, indicates that Hovind is, perhaps not surprisingly, way off the mark on this one (this is, of course, not even considering the whole “evolution” thing).
Originally posted by Darwin’s Finch
(I hope I did that right)
So I take it you’ve seen quite a number of dinosaurs then? You seem quite familiar with their appearance. And I thought that all those dinosaur experts were mostly hypothesizing what they looked like. Silly me. Not that I don’t trust them or anything, but they did, after all, create entire male and female models of “missing links” based on what would later prove to be a pig’s tooth (Nebraska Man, I believe).
I disagree. Many of the dragon drawings I’ve seen look rather similar to how we depict dinosaurs, especially sauropods. And the fact that old drawings of dragons don’t match up exactly with the pictures of dinosaurs in our books nowadays is beside the point. Many depictions of people and animals from older periods don’t look realistic either by today’s standards. If dinosaurs had been contemporary with humans at any point, the oral tradition would have survived, and perhaps become distorted from reality over time. Can anyone say with absolute certainty that there is no Bigfoot, or Loch Ness Monster? The eyewitness descriptions of these and other unconfirmed creatures differ widely, even though they may have conceivably seen the same creatures. Is it impossible that dinosaurs could have survived to a point where they could have been contemporary with humans? If you had told a marine biologist 50 years ago that you had seen a coelacanth, you would have been laughed at. Not so anymore.
I guess my point is, if someone living in the middle ages had seen a living sauropod, and heard stories from others who had seen large, flying reptiles, might the word “dragon” spring to that person’s mind? Just as people today think of Nessie and the Lake Champlain Monster as dinosaurs, might ancient people have seen them as dragons or sea serpents?
If you’re asking if I’ve seen dinosaurs “in the flesh”, obviously, the answer is “no”. However, I have seen enough bones and complete skeletons to know that a) none of them had wings, and b) none of them were particularly serpentine. If any existed which fall into either of these categoires, they have not been discovered yet.
**
For many species, about the only hypothesizing involved is in regards to skin color. We have complete skeletons, we have skin impressions. We even have feather impressions for some of the small ones. Some paleontologists extrapolate appearance based on relatively little material, and, depending on the paleontologist’s skills in comparative anatomy, may or may not come up with something close.
**
You are confusing dinosaur paleontologists with human paleontologists. You are also confusing the works of individuals with the precepts within a branch of science. Again, not all paleontologists (whether human, dinosaur, or other) are willing to extrapolate upward from “tooth” to “whole animal”, and those that do often find themselves mistaken. If a human paleontologist is not familiar with pig anatomy, for example, s/he is more likely to make such a mistake than one who has a broader knowledge base.
**
With the obvious difference being that sauropods didn’t have wings, of course. Nor where they terribly svelte.
**
But, that’s rather the point: it’s not a matter of “matching up exactly”, it’s a matter of being very wrong in very specific details like wings. A cave drawing of a buffalo can be seen as a buffalo. A cave drawing of a mammoth can be seen as a mammoth. A cave drawing of a buffalo with wings would obviously be seen as fanciful. When one sees an old engraving of what is generally known as a dragon, with wings and all, one would rather suspect that, if drawn from life, the creature it is drawn from should be possessed of wings as well. And, again, dinosaurs, apart from birds, did not have wings. So, we are left with either fanciful embellishment of a real creature, or, more likely, a depicition of a fanciful creature from the start.
**
There should, of course, be other evidence of such, besides badly distorted oral tradition; however, there is none.
**
Is it impossible? No. Is it very highly unlikely, to the point of there being an essentially 0% chance? Yes.
**
If the word “dragon” meant to this individual, “large, flying reptile”, then no. Sauropods did not fly. They would no more likely mistake a sauropod for a flying reptile than they would an elephant.
Dinosaur fossils may well have fueled tales of dragons, but I find there to be no evidence that dinosaurs, or their fossils, would have inspired them.
hy·poth·e·sis (h-pth-ss)
A tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation.
Yeah, they’re just hypothesising in one sense, but all further investigation has supported the hypothesis. These models are constructed based on what we know of anatomy and physiology. They’re not just WAGs.
To put it another way, you’re equally hypothesising that the people you talk to on these boards exist.
True enough, and doctors once believed that bad air and an imabalance of humours caused disease, physicists believed phlogeston wa released by fire, engineers declared powered flight to be impossible and religious leaders declared the Earth to be the centre of the universe. Based on this I assume you don’t trust anyone, since no group of people has failed to make silly mistakes or be guilty of outright fraud.
Mr. Hovind himnself has said:
The Belgium Congo is a swamp.
The star Sirius is a white dwarf
Some comets are made of iron.
All of which are outright lies.
If there’s one thing you will get respect for around these boards it’s warranted, healthy scepticism. This is not the same however as being sceptical of those who don’t support your views. If you wish to be sceptical of groups who commit fraud (which is what you imply above) then surely you should be even more sceptical of individuals who commit fraud?
I will agree woleheartedly that some dragon illustrations do bear a passing resemblance to dinosaurs. I’ll agree even more wholeheartedly that depictions in books often don’t match reality. Follow one of the links I posted above for some classic examples. However some dragon illustraions also bear a striking resemblance to crocodiles. WHat does that tell us?
Which is the classic argument form ignorance.
Can you say with absolute certainty that there is no Loch Ness Monster in your living room? Of course not. What you can say is that there is no evidence for such a monster and that all searches have so far failed to find any such thing. Ditto for dragons, Nessie and Bigfoot.
But even more conceivably they vary widely because they are fabrications, distortions, result of delerium or inaccuarte observations of bears, moon-shiners and rotting logs. Ditto for dragons.
Lack of consistent description makes something less credible doesn’t it, not more?
We can’t know because we don’t know why they died out. It may well be that it is impossible.
True. And if you’d told her you’d seen flying purple elephants over Trafalgar Square she would have laughed at you. 99% of the time people laugh at you because you’re talking nonsense with no logical support. Occasionally you may be right, but that doesn’t mean the scepticism wasn’t warranted.
And my point is that if someone living in the middle ages had seen a living crocodile, or a whale, or a volcano, or fossil bones might the word “dragon” spring to that person’s mind? We know those things existed in the middle ages, why not go with the proven explanation?
People in the middle ages also believed in gryphons, unicorns and werewolves. Why don’t we try to find the most similar creatures to them in the fossil record and attribute such legends to them surviving into the modern world? Why stop at dragons?
Indisputably. Now all we need to do is demonstrate what causes lake monster sightings. Most can be attributed to fish jumping, rotting vegetation, capsized boats and fraud. So by your own reasoning such things are also the cause of at least some dragon legends.
No dinos required.