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Dragon World
Topic Started: Nov 22 2009, 01:15 AM (2,175 Views)
TheCoon
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Happy merry Jesusmas inhabitants of the Spec Forums!
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Dragons are creatures that took, in an alternate Earth, the places of mammals after the KT extinction. This facinating creatures are descendants from the Avicephalians, winged lizard-like animals from the paleozoic era.
Dragons are a new class of animals, alongside mammals, reptiles, birds, etc. They have long hair-like scales in some areas of the body, six limbs (two wings and four legs) and some of them are capable of breathing fire

Clasification and Evolution:
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True Dragons: Carnivorous beasts. They fill almost every apex predator niche. They possess 4 lungs: 2 for breathing and 2 chambered lungs used for flight and for fire breathing. They also have a waxy cover in the mouth and tounge that prevents the animal from burning itself while throwing fire. Their hairy structures are resistant and only the belly is a soft spot, while the rest of the body is armoured.

Drakes: Herbivorous beasts. They are grazing animals that gave up flight for bulkyness and strength. Some of them have elaborated horns that can blow to make strange whizling noises they use to comunicate. They are armoured in almost every part of their body. Their tooth is similar to the ceratopsian and hadrosaur tooth, an example of convergent evolution.

Odd-Jointed Dragons: Strange group of dragons. They were once spread all over the world, filling both carnivorous and herbivorous niches. As other dragons evolved, they started to become more scarce. The last Odd-Jointed Dragon family is the family of the mole dragons: Lazy-looking passive omnivores that live in the forest and have an exeptional ability for digging.

Stone Dragons: Herbivorous wing-less dragons. They seem to be rather new family of dragons. They occupy hervivorous niches all arround the world. They have a skin as hard as a rock, hece the name. They mainly live in the deserts and are quite small, though some species can get really big.

Two-Legged Dragons: Animals similar to birds. They have a similar head, and a smilar body. Some of them have small atrophiated front limbs, or just no front limbs at all. They are omnivorous, though they feed mainly of seeds.

Pseudodragons: This creatures are closely related to dragons, but they're not true dragons since they are unable to throw fire from their mouths, and they are unable to fly since they lost their wings. They occupy most marine niches, but there's also some terrestrial families that inhabit in the southeastern asia and Australia.

I'm really tired, so I'm gonna post more later. (Also, since I'm really tired, sorry if there's any grammatical mistake)
Greetings young life form! Procyon Lotor at your service.

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Carlos
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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An interesting use of D&D imagery, and the project seems fun. However, some aspects are a bit cliched, having been used before on other dragon projects
Lemuria:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/topic/5724950/

Terra Alternativa:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/Conceptual_Evolution/forum/460637/

My Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/Carliro

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The Dodo
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Prime Specimen
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Nice family tree, could of swore I saw those pictures before in a D&D Monster manual.
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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

If you're going to have them all inter-related, how come they are so different from each other?
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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TheCoon
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Happy merry Jesusmas inhabitants of the Spec Forums!
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Those are animal families. The Dracocephala is an animal class, like mammals and birds.
Greetings young life form! Procyon Lotor at your service.

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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

Aaah.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Venatosaurus
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HAUS OF SPEC
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If fire breathing is removed, as well as a reduction in the number of armored species, this project will be really awesome !



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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

I know fire-breathing is difficult to evolve and ecosystem-wrecking, but it's still cool.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Ddraig Goch
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Ar hyd y nos

Yeah, you can't have dragons without some chaotic burninating.

So, Lil' Cthulhu, what do you want us to do? Help you design the dragons, theorize as to how their assets might work, etc?
Save the Blibbering Humdinger from extinction!
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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

The burninating enables dragons to create a civilisation. It all starts with FIRE.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Tamara LH
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Aw you beat me to it! :D I've been working on a similar project off and on for years for a Role playing game setting. I'm not very fond of D&D (especially the newer versions) and based my species mainly on actual folklore (which, surprisingly is LESS diverse than D&D's ecology) but I still love your cladogram. Can use some of your names for my clades, with proper citation of course?

My wolrd was/is (if i ever finish it) a "what if there really was a Pellucidarian Hollow World like E. R. Burroughs described but had some creatures remembered only in mythology? I figured true dragons, gryphons, manticores etc would have to be coelurosauravians. But I pegged wyverns as derived Rhamphorynchid pterosaurs and cockatrices/feathered serpents as venomous flying maniraptors similar to Archaeopteryx. I still havent figured out what to do with the Basilisk/Behir group as no real tetropod group is multi-legged. I think I'll just make them primitive snakes since the extra limbs were added on in the late Middle Ages due to confusion with scorpions which were originally considered reptiles (really, I'm not making that up).

Any way give us a clue as to what you want in this project and I will give you some ideas.

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Holben
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Rumbo a la Victoria

Well, there have been many topics with dragons. Terrasaurus, for example, and my MM topic at the moment. Many others as well.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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TheCoon
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Happy merry Jesusmas inhabitants of the Spec Forums!
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Those images in the cladogram are temporary. I'm working in the real images, but I lack of the privilege of a scanner, so I think I'll have to wait.
In the meantime, I would really like you to help me with this project, making it as plausible as possible (lol that rhymed), and suggesting changes in the cladogram if you think there's a mistake, or just if there's something you don't like of it.
Greetings young life form! Procyon Lotor at your service.

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The Dodo
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Your Pseudodragons don't have six legs like in the picture do day, because I don't see how a leg from a rib membrane could evolve.
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TheCoon
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Happy merry Jesusmas inhabitants of the Spec Forums!
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No they don't have that sixth leg. It's just that it was the best image that I could found.
Greetings young life form! Procyon Lotor at your service.

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