Lawson, C. (2015). Fire-breathing Dragon. Deviant Art. https://www.deviantart.com/corex13/art/Fire-breathing-Dragon-563669282
Dragons are a key feature in many modern fantasy novels, movies, TV series, and games. They are found in many cultures from the Chinese serpentine long dragons to the bulky winged Western dragons. Dragon-like creatures also appear in a wide variety of other cultures such as the Aboriginal Australian rainbow serpent, Aztec Quetzalcoatl, and Scandanavian Lindworm. Theories about the origin of the concept of dragons span numerous scientific fields including paleontology, archeology, paleobotany, and anthropology.
One theory for the origin of dragons is that they were ancient people’s interpretation of the fossils of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. In her book, The First Fossil Hunters, Adrienne Mayor argues that many stories of mythical creatures, including griffins, giants, and dragons, were inspired by fossils. She notes that fossils referred to as “dragon bones” have been used in Chinese traditional medicines for millennia. She also describes a large deposit of bones of extinct giraffe and elephant relatives in Northern India that could have been the root of the tales of dragons in that region. However, not all tales of dragons could likely have been inspired by fossils because some regions with these myths, such as Scandinavia, lack large or conspicuous animal fossils.
Another theory for the origin of dragons also involves fossils, but instead of the fossils of large animals, it proposes that fossilized plants could have helped inspire dragon legends. A study by Dorothybelle Poli and Lisa Stoneman notes that fossils of Lepidodendron, a common plant from the Carboniferous period, feature a scale-like pattern reminiscent of dragon scales. The roots of Lepidodendron could also be interpreted as a claw and the branch scars look somewhat like a large reptilian eye. They tested these ideas on a modern audience by asking a group of people what they thought the Lepidodendron fossils looked like. Many people offered responses relating to dragons. They also analyzed the locations of fossilized plants compared to dragon myths and found that the locations frequently coincided, but that fossilized plants did not occur in all dragon myth locations. This suggests that in some, but not all locations, fossilized plants could have contributed to dragon myths.
Lepidodendron scale pattern
Lepidodendron sp. [Photograph].(n.d.). Sam Noble Museum, Norman, OK, United States. https://samnoblemuseum.ou.edu/common-fossils-of-oklahoma/plant-fossils/fossils-by-plant-group/fossil-lycophytes/
A third explanation for dragon myths is that they were inspired by living reptiles such as large snakes, crocodiles, or monitor lizards. Yet another hypothesis, proposed by David E. Jones in An Instinct for Dragons, is that the myth of dragons comes from combining innate fears of several of the predators of ancestral humans: great cats, raptors, and snakes. He argues that fears of these animals have been evolutionarily “hard-wired” into the human brain. However, there is little evidence for this “hard-wiring” hypothesis, and in some cultures dragons are viewed as a force of good rather than evil, suggesting that they did not originate in human fears. There are many other theories about the origin of dragons, including that they were inspired by rainbows. More than one of these varied dragon origin theories may be true, depending on the region.
If dragons did exist, how would they have evolved and what would their genetics be like? A 2018 paper by Nathaniel Morris, “The Genetic Origin of Dragons,” set out to answer these very questions. Most Western dragons are depicted with four legs and two wings, for a total of six limbs. Morris argues that in order for dragons to evolve, first a ground-dwelling lizard species would have to mutate to have 6 limbs. This could be possible genetically, but would likely harm the fitness of the animal, meaning that the mutation could not spread through the species through evolution by natural selection. Instead, it would have to spread through genetic drift, random changes in the frequency of a trait in a population. The limbs would then need to evolve into wings. In birds, the evolution of wings involved the genes HOXD-10,-11,-12,-13, so these genes would likely be involved in the evolution of wings in the hypothetical dragons.
Finally, if dragons did exist, would they be able to fly? Adrian L. Jessup Schneider set up a system of calculations to determine what a dragon’s wing size and shape could look like and how it would impact its flight capabilities. Two factors that impact flight are wing loading (the ratio of the animal’s mass to its wing size) and aspect ratio (the ratio of the length of the wings to their width). There are four main types of bird wings: elliptical, high-speed, high-aspect ratio, and high-lift. Each of these has different ranges of wing loading and aspect ratio and provides different amounts of maneuverability, efficiency, and speed. Using the body type of a Komodo Dragon, Schnieder set up an analysis where they input body length, wingspan, and wing chord (width) and calculated the wing loading and aspect ratio, which they corresponded to the wing type to calculate approximately how fast, efficient, and maneuverable that dragon would be. They found that dragons with a large enough wing size would be capable of flight, and the shape of the wing would impact the way the dragon could fly. However, this study did not consider other limits to flight such as bone structure.
By considering different aspects of the dragon myth, such as origin, genetics, and flight capabilities, we can delve into numerous scientific disciplines, from paleontology to anthropology, genetics, and aerodynamics.
About the Author
Marcella is a Junior at Northwood High School who is interested in a career as a Conservation Biologist. She enjoys reading, playing the piano, and being outside.
Sources
Poli, D. & Stoneman L. (2020). Drawing new boundaries: Finding the origins of dragons in
carboniferous plant fossils. Leonardo, 53(1), 50-57. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/748790
Malone, M.S. (2012). The guardian of all things: The epic story of human memory. Macmillan.
Mayor, A. (2011). The first fossil hunters: Dinosaurs, mammoths, and myth in Greek and Roman
times. Princeton University Press.
Stromberg, J. (2012, January 23). Where Did Dragons Come From? Smithsonian Magazine.
Jones, D. E. (2002). An Instinct for Dragons. Psychology Press.
Jordan-Smith, P. (2002). Untitled Review [Review of the book An Instinct for Dragons by Jones,
D. E.] Western States Folklore Society, 61(1), 123-124. https://doi.org/10.2307/1500302
Morris, N. (2018). The genetic origin of dragons. Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Topics, 7, 54-56.
Schneider, A. L. J. (n.d.) Dragon Flight Analyzer [Unpublished Manuscript]. School of
Computing, Queen's University.
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