This Newly Discovered Dinosaur Was Basically A Dragon

Dragons. As featured in many a video game. Fictional creatures, right? WRONG. Dragons were real and and science has now (sorta) proven it.

Alright, technically these ‘dragons’ were ‘dinosaurs’, but by God these dinosaurs are so dragonlike in size and dimensions that they are literally being called dragons by the people who discovered them.

The recently discovered creature has been called a ‘Azhdarchidan’, which is the Persian word for dragon, and it was a type of Pterosaur (think Pterodactyl) that existed worldwide during the Cretaceous period. They were one of the last Pterosaurs to roam the planet and I’m hoping they had voices like Sean Connery and breathed fire. I am also hoping one of them was called Alduin. That would be super cool.

But I digress…

For a sense of scale, the Azhdarchidan had a wingspan of 10-12 metres. Not feet. Metres. That’s about the same length as your average bus. Okay, now I want you to imagine a living, breathing bus flying through the air (possibly but probably not) breathing fire and shouting at you in Sean Connery’s voice. That is a visual I can get behind.

But it’s probably all ruined when you consider that all dinosaurs probably had feathers. Just ignore the feathers part.

Just A Heads Up, New Study Says Earth Was Once Covered In Literal Dragons [The Mary Sue]

Note: I’m adding this great post from NegativeZero because I know very little about dinosaurs, but he clearly does!

NegativeZero @negativezero
Sorry, have to be that annoying pedantic guy:

Pterosaurs are not dinosaurs! ‘Dinosaurs’ are reptiles in the orders Saurischia and Ornithishia. Pterosaurs were winged reptiles in a different order (Pterosauria).

Pterosaurs did not have feathers. Feathers are an adaptation that’s found in some sub-orders of Saurischia, Coeurlosauria, which includes the Tyrannosaurs, Compsognathids and Maniraptors (and that order includes Aves, the modern bird).

Also it looks nothing like a ‘dragon’, that’s just some spin bullshit that the people reporting on it have added. It’s a big awkward-looking winged thing with a massive toothless beak:
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2014/08/18/Toothless-dragon-pterosaurs-filled-late-Cretaceous-skies/1801408375504/

They’re basically the same thing as the Quetzalcoatlus, except that was probably even bigger.

Thanks for the clarification. I am so not qualified to be writing about Dinosaurs/Pterosaurs/’Dragons’.


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