[MonsieurHood]

I'm a believer. I think they existed. Big, beautiful flying creatures that probably weren't quite as big as we give them credit for, and probably a bit less firey than we tend to paint them nowadays. But ancient people's from Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon's all the way to the Renaissance (i hope i spelled that right.) not only believed in them, but reported actual encounters with them. Marco Polo in China, Christian Saints in Europe, Dark Age Barbarians in Britain, Sailors in ships from all places, Indian Tribes in North America, and so on, and so forth.
Personally, i believe they existed. They might not have been the fancy, horned and fanged, colossal beasts of our fantasies, but they were big enough, and frightening enough to illicit the deepest fears of our ancestors. We humans tend to destroy the things we fear. We get scared because something is too big, too potentially dangerous and too close to our proximity. One little medieval princess gets a look at one and says "Oh, my brave Prince! Yonder dragon is just scarin' me all silly and what-not. Why don't you all go over and kill it for us and we'll give y'all a lil' ole' kiss?". And pretty soon, dragons start dropping to crossbows, sword swings and spear thrusts all over the place. There is an account of a certain female Christian Saint who was sacrificed by her people to a dragon. The dragon didn't eat her. She made friends with it, made a pet out of it, and led it harmlessly back to her village, bound only by a tiny string like some scaly, winged puppy dog. Whereupon the local poplulace out of fear and ignorance, promptly murdered the poor unsuspecting thing. I think that's what happened to them. I think we killed off one of the most legendary, beautiful and wonderous creatures that ever graced the face of our planet. And i have to ask myself now, just who really was the monster after all?

[jtrek79]

nobel creatures

[NCC-73515]

Berengaria VII, if I remember correctly...

[MonsieurHood]

Originally Posted by NCC-73515

Berengaria VII, if I remember correctly...

Spock saw one there, according to TOS, but he didn't say anything about killing it. After seeing Spock getting along with the Horta so well, it's hard to imagine him killing a dragon out of ignorance, certainly not out of fear since Vulcan emotions are tightly controlled from within. So he probably didn't.

[Don Farnsworth]

For years people reported sightings of creatures that looked like giant lizards and called them dragons.

Then we began to find fossils of creatures that looked like giant lizards but we know they were not dragons because we named them dinosaurs.

Kind of like how we know clark cannot be superman because clark wears glasses.

Did they fly and breath fire? let's face it any stories of actual sightings were always going to be prone to exaggeration even if not by the original story teller.

[horatio]

Originally Posted by Don Farnsworth

For years people reported sightings of creatures that looked like giant lizards and called them dragons.

Then we began to find fossils of creatures that looked like giant lizards but we know they were not dragons because we named them dinosaurs.

Kind of like how we know clark cannot be superman because clark wears glasses.

Did they fly and breath fire? let's face it any stories of actual sightings were always going to be prone to exaggeration even if not by the original story teller.

Well said. Can a reptile weighing several hundred or thousand kilogram actually fly? Can it breathe fire without actually burning itself and which evolutionary advantage would such a trait have?
As you said, it it is the old Chinese whispers principle, someone saw a large reptile and a few years later, it is a large flying reptile which can breathe fire.

[MonsieurHood]

There have been flying and gliding reptiles both in prehistoric and modern times. In fact, some gliding reptiles still exist if i'm not mistaken (a herpitoligist i'm not). I don't think a flying reptile is such a far-fetched thing. I mean just think about Archeopterix or the Pterosaurs. Now the fire breathing and being the size of a greyhound bus and flying, that is another matter entirely. Even the largest known flying birds like the Teratorn didn't weigh very much in comparison to land animals of similar size.

[MonsieurHood]

The Common Gliding Lizard (Draco sumatranus) is a lizard with elongated ribs and skin flaps on the sides of its body. When opened, these skin flaps allow it to glide between tree trunks. It is primarily a tree dweller, except that the females come down to the forest floor to lay eggs. The body length is of about 9 cm, with a slightly longer tail. The body is of a dark grey/brown colouration with stripes and patterns to help it camouflage against the tree trunks. The males have a yellow triangular flap of skin under the chin, the gular fold, which is used to communicate with other lizards, mostly for mating. Females have a much smaller and blue flap. They feed on small insects.
They are relatively common in forests and in urban settings such as parks and gardens. They are found in Southeast Asia: Malaysia, Singapore, Sumatra and Borneo.

It used to be thought of as a sub-specie of Draco volans.

From the Wikipedia

Odd that these gliding lizards just happen to share the Latin name Draco, isn't it? But at any rate, gliding reptiles do appear to continue to exist to this day.

Not exactly a giant, but by golly, it does have four legs and "wings" of a kind doesn't it?

[trekie]

If they did, that would be great, mythical as we see them , they are beautiful

[Livingston]

Originally Posted by MonsieurHood

I'm a believer. I think they existed. Big, beautiful flying creatures that probably weren't quite as big as we give them credit for, and probably a bit less firey than we tend to paint them nowadays. But ancient people's from Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon's all the way to the Renaissance (i hope i spelled that right.) not only believed in them, but reported actual encounters with them. Marco Polo in China, Christian Saints in Europe, Dark Age Barbarians in Britain, Sailors in ships from all places, Indian Tribes in North America, and so on, and so forth.
Personally, i believe they existed. They might not have been the fancy, horned and fanged, colossal beasts of our fantasies, but they were big enough, and frightening enough to illicit the deepest fears of our ancestors. We humans tend to destroy the things we fear. We get scared because something is too big, too potentially dangerous and too close to our proximity. One little medieval princess gets a look at one and says "Oh, my brave Prince! Yonder dragon is just scarin' me all silly and what-not. Why don't you all go over and kill it for us and we'll give y'all a lil' ole' kiss?". And pretty soon, dragons start dropping to crossbows, sword swings and spear thrusts all over the place. There is an account of a certain female Christian Saint who was sacrificed by her people to a dragon. The dragon didn't eat her. She made friends with it, made a pet out of it, and led it harmlessly back to her village, bound only by a tiny string like some scaly, winged puppy dog. Whereupon the local poplulace out of fear and ignorance, promptly murdered the poor unsuspecting thing. I think that's what happened to them. I think we killed off one of the most legendary, beautiful and wonderous creatures that ever graced the face of our planet. And i have to ask myself now, just who really was the monster after all?

Don't know if I believe in them but I thought the movie Reign of Fire portrayed a believable excuse for our history's record of them. Decent movie, I bought they existed in that film!