I don't say dragons DO exist, I just say they can.
First of all, dragons aren't the huge, flying, firebreathing lizards with six limbs the fantasy genre shows us, because such dragons are as real as flying trees.
Dragons can't be huge.The bigger a flying creature becomes, the bigger wings in proportion to its body it needs. The biggest flying creature that ever existed was a kind of pterosaur with a wingspan of 20 metres. Since pterosaurs are better adapted to fly than dragons, a dragon could be only as big as a dog with a wingspan of about 7 metres and a body length of 3,5 metres.Bigger dragons couldn't fly.
Dragons can't be lizands or even reptiles. The ability of flying reqires many abaptions like being homoiothermic (there wasn't a single flying poikilothermic vertebrate in earth history), having a very efficient heart and lung system and a light frame.Definitely, dragons would evolve from reptiles, but they can't be called reptiles but are an own vertebrate class.
Dragons can't have six limbs, since they are vertebrates. But, nobody says insects have ten limbs, since their wings not evolved from their legs. Most likely the wings of dragons evolved from their ribs. A kind of lizasd called "draco volans" has a gliding device consisting of elongated ribs. when you reorganize the ribs, you will get a wing-like construct and as you know, on medieval dragon pictures they have wings that look like this rib-construct and not like the bat-wings shown on fantasy-pictures. Strangely, the few winged asian dragon-images have the same kind of wings like the medieval dragons.
The fire-breathing thing is just chemistry. Mix two different chemicals which react exothermic or expose a self-inflammable chemical to oxygen and you will get fire. The bombardier beetle produces two different chemicals,which it mixes when threatened and shoots them out as a 100°C hot, stinking liquid on their enemy. Fire-breath works after the same principle with the difference that it is a burning liquid.
As you see, it is possible for a dragon to exist.
>>1
The evolutionary steps needed for the dragons to occur are too improbable.
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Anonymous2006-12-17 11:27
Square circles can exist. Just take a circle and deform it into a square. Voila!
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Anonymous2006-12-17 13:10
>>3 improbable doesn't mean impossible, >>1 only said that they COULD exist, as in there exists some possible genetic code that would produce an animal fitting the description of a dragon. Making a dragon would be a sweet genetic engineering project.
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Anonymous2006-12-17 13:52
Making a dragon would be a sweet genetic engineering project.
Yes, yes it would.
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Anonymous 2006-12-17 15:18
i wish i could have a pet dragon so i can controll the whole world!
lol ... This is impossible because we all know the universe was created as is and is unchanging according to the bible. That also makes genetic engineering possible because evolution is impossible. You should really look up on the evolutionists suck thread.
"Bombardier beetles have come to public attention in recent years largely because of arguments put forward by creationists, particularly in the children's book Bomby the Bombardier Beetle.[1] The book argues that the beetles' internal design is an example of irreducible complexity, because various components needed to make the system work appear to provide no benefit in themselves, meaning the entire system would have to be created at once. According to the book this indicates that the beetle is the product of intelligent design.
However, researchers have shown that creationist claims were based on a misreading of research and that the chemical weapon involves minor alterations from systems in other, less noxious beetles.[2] This lends weight to the idea that this beetle has diverged from other species as a product of evolution by natural selection."
They already exist. Therefore catgirls are more important.
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Anonymous2006-12-19 15:50
>>1 http://www.tudiscovery.com/dragones/index.shtml
DRAGONES: UNA FANTASÍA HECHA REALIDAD es una producción de la compañía Darlow Smithson. John Smithson, David McNab y Alice Keens Soper ejercieron de productores ejecutivos. Justin Hardy desempeñó la función de director, mientras Ceri Barnes ejerció de productor para la mencionada Darlow Smithson.
Los productores buscan respuestas en la naturaleza.
Los productores de DRAGONES: UNA FANTASÍA HECHA REALIDAD colaboraron con el doctor Peter Horgarth, el conocido experto en dinosaurios John Sibbick y los animadores de Framestore para crear la versión más realista posible de un dragón. ¿Cómo lo consiguieron? Tomaron sus apuntes y notas directamente de la naturaleza y utilizaron modelos reales de comportamiento animal para dar forma a la anatomía de un dragón.
• ALAS: Las alas de un dragón podrían parecerse a las de un murciélago. Se sujetaban sobre cuatro puntos y eran capaces de transportar más peso que las de un pájaro, que se sostienen en sólo dos.
• LA IMPORTANCIA DEL PESO: Todos los animales tienen bacterias en sus intestinos que les ayudan a digerir la comida. Durante este proceso, estas mismas bacterias emanan elementos metabólicos como el gas. El equipo del programa supuso que la bacteria del interior del intestino de un dragón podría haber sido la única con la capacidad de expulsar hidrógeno. Este gas, 14 veces más ligero que el aire, sería la clave para que el dragón consiguiese volar y escupir fuego. El hidrógeno sería canalizado a dos compartimentos de almacenamiento especializados: las vejigas del dragón, que una vez completamente infladas, le ayudarían a disminuir su peso para emprender el vuelo.
• LIGEROS COMO UNA PLUMA: Los animales voladores (pájaros, murciélagos, etc.) reducen su peso por medio de estructuras óseas huecas o en forma de “panal de abejas”. El equipo del programa utilizó estos modelos de esqueleto para elaborar una teoría que intenta explicar cómo estas criaturas eran capaces de volar. Incluso con huesos huecos, un dragón era demasiado pesado como para alzar el vuelo. Sin embargo, si unimos a esta característica la ligereza que le proporcionaba el hidrógeno, llegamos a la conclusión de que los dragones eran los suficientemente ligeros como para poder volar.
Fotos: DCI
There is no necessary restriction on wing or body size, just what we're used to seeing in nature. A large dragon could exist, and even be similar in structure to pterosaurs. The main feat to overcome if we were to see dragons produced naturally through evolution or through genetic engineering would be the ability to breath fire, and the wings. Breathing fire because producing in one's head the right chemicals to produce a flame when combined is very difficult and risky, and almost non existent in the wild at the moment. Wings, because a dragon already has two legs and two arms/legs (arguable), and so a third set is also something not existent in birds, mammals or reptiles.
>>1
I fail to see how vertebrates cannot have 6 limbs (obviously with the exeption that vertebrate is defined with 4 limbs). Then again, I haven't studied much in the way of the limits of animal body shapes.
Still, I agree that dragons could exist. It's just that they don't exist here.