The Origins of Dragons 2

In my last post on the subject, I showed the earliest of my attempts to create dragons within a phylogeny for my fictional world. Today, I am going to show the first of those lines to diverge from the ancestral Epihexapodosaurus:

Protocyonosaurus ("first dog-lizard"), on the left, is the ancestor of the two freaky-looking critters on the right. On top is Falcibrachiodontosaurus ("sickle arm-tooth lizard"), and on the bottom is Spyrocyonosaurus ("Spyro the dog-lizard," because the head crest reminded me of Spyro the dragon, but this critter isn't a dragon yet), whose line leads to the oldest of the Varanganskan dragons, the great serpents.

Starting from the crown, Epihexapodosaurus, the first node on the bottom branch is what we're looking at:

Note that there are three red dots at the end, one of them outlined in black. This represents the only line to survive long enough to witness the events of The Nine Empires.

Here is that branch of the tree filled in, or at least what I managed to get drawn up today:

Here is a version with names instead of pictures. Only names in red have been drawn:

Now, when I set out to create some dragons for my fictional world, I wanted to make three types: wyrms, classic European dragons, and feathered dragons. Wyverns also exist in this world, but they are actual lizards, and much more distantly related to dragons than dragons are to each other. The first type is quite primitive, and so basal to its relatives that it doesn't have differentiated limbs. Here it is, Megaserpentes, or "great serpent," the first dragon:

Again, not my best work, but better than my last version of it. Besides, each of these bizarre critters will get its own detailled drawing when I have time to do that (and I'll get to show off my pencil drawing skills).

Megaserpentes has two daughter clades; the basal Dryoserpentes, or tree serpents, which look very similar but are smaller, leaner, and have longer legs better adapted for climbing; and the more differentiated Thalassaserpentes, or sea serpents, which traded in their legs for flippers:

Unlike the basal form, this clade has members alive at the time of The Nine Empires, but those survivors have lost their legs completely, and they look like fluffy, legless crocodiles. You certainly wouldn't confuse them with snakes, and at 18 metres long, they are far larger than any snake.

Moving to "more advanced" lineages, you'll notice two brown, furry dinosaurs, Arctosaurus, and Cyonarctosaurus directly beneath it. Their names mean "bear-lizard" and "dog-bear-lizard," respectively, but both resemble a six-legged version of what Sir Richard Owen thought that Megalosaurus looked like when it was first discovered, even though it was a theropod and looked very much like T. Rex. Neither of these dinosaurs have actual fur, but down feathers instead, and Arctosaurus also has a shortened tail to better preserve warmth, because these critters lived in fairly cold climates. I'll go into more detail about this later... maybe. This post is already a bit on the long side for not having as much to show as I'd like, so I'll leave you with this.

Remember that I mentioned in my first dragon-related post that some of these critters look like Tyranids? BEHOLD!

The most advanced of the brachiodontosaurs, Tyrannobrachiodontosaurus was a forest-dwelling ambush predator that preyed upon large animals, and could easily tear up enemies much larger than itself. Its cousin Hydrabrachiodontosaurus was basically the aquatic version, and couldn't rear up on its hind legs. By the way, dinosaur tails don't bend the same way that mammalian tails do, so the Tyranid look-alike bends its tail to the side when rearing up.

Tomorrow's post will probably be more of the same, since I already have most of the flying dinosaurs that lead up to the "European" dragons already done.