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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mythusmage" data-source="post: 1955099" data-attributes="member: 571">Dragons Take Flight[sidebar]The animal is small, about the size of a modern squirrel monkey. It is lightly built, and may have hollow bones. It looks like nothing less than a reptilian winged cat, but with a vaguely crocodilian head and tail. It is in full flight.Though the wings have yet to take their modern position just behind and above the forelegs, they still look very much as modern dragon wings do, and from the footage taken by the time-probe worked well. Well enough to make even early flying dragons strong fliers.[/sidebar]The footage was shot in the Late Triassic, near the start of the Early Jurassic. From the subject it appears the first flying dragons were small animals. They may have been predators or herbivores (no fossil remains have yet been found, and the animal did not show its teeth while being filmed), but it is fairly obvious they were flying.This advance gave the hexapedal dragon a new niche. But one it still faced substantial competition in. The pterosaurs were already on the scene, and were better at flying than the new dragons were. Between pterosaurs 'threatening' flying dragons, and the new arboreal primates crowding out quadrupedal and terrestrial hexepedal dragons, it looked like the order was doomed any way. But a change was coming up that would alter matters irrevocably.By the Early Jurassic the hexapedal dragons were extinct. A short lived experiment that didn't work out. The quadrupedal dragons, on the other head, were hanging on, though in greatly reduced numbers in terms of genus and species. By the Late Jurassic the quadrupedal dragon would be gone, with the exception of a single species that managed to hold on till the Middle Cretaceous. The exception was the flying dragon.In 1870 a fossil was found in central Germany. In the same quarry that would later give us the first archeopteryx specimen. In this case it was a partial specimen; a part of the skull, the first half of the torso, and the lower half of the wings. There are three things to note about this fossil.1. It is the size of an average pig.2. The bones are solid. They are not the bones of a bird or pterodactyl.3. The wings are functioning. They have the same structure and musculature as a modern dragon wing.While there are those who disagree the consensus is, this animal took to the air not under the power of its wings, but through magic. It took flight through a psychic ability. As with modern dragons this animal used its wings to propel itself through the air. Its wings were for propulsion alone, not propulsion and lift as with birds.This advance would make a huge change in the future of the order.Coming next, dragons writ large, and deflecting asteroids.</blockquote>

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