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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RavinRay" data-source="post: 1323458" data-attributes="member: 16231">A pterosaur-based wyvern? Hmmm, very intriguing. It would imply the elongation of the other phalanges to support the wing. There are two groups of pterosaurs: the long-tailed, toothed, smaller rhamphorhynchs; and the short-tailed, mostly toothless, generally bigger pterodactyls. Choosing the former as the wyvern ancestor would account for it's teeth and tail; but it would have had to undergo a tremendous increase in size paralleling that of the pterodactyls.I'm curious to know how to account for the lung wang and dragon turtle, as you say that the lung family tree is less straightforward. It's a safe guess that they are each other's closest relatives; but did they evolve from true turtles (say like the giant Archelon of the Late Cretaceous seas); from a turtle relative (procolophonids and pareiasaurs are purported to be turtle relatives); from another armor-bearing thecodont (like the somewhat flattended and distended aetosaurs); or from another reptile altogether? A subgroup of the placodonts, which are more closely related to the plesiosaurs, independently evolved a shell, though the details are different.Li lung and sphinxes, lammasu (and why not shedu as well - oh wait, they're equine not leonine) form a group huh? What about pegasi and shedu?I like to think of the relationship between true and lesser dragons as similar to that between hominoids (apes and humans) and monkeys. While apes and monkeys both belong to the anthropoid suborder of the Primates order, apes have evolved to a higher level than monkeys. Hence the words ape and monkey should not be interchanged, even though they sometimes are in common usage. Likewise, true dragons evolved to a higher level unattained by lesser dragons, whichever ones exist on your particular worlds. A pseudodragon, no matter how clever it may be and how closely it resembles a true dragon, can never attain (on its own) the level of superiority any true dragon has.</blockquote>

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