Talk:Dragons/@comment-3410511-20150828145415/@comment-10390252-20150828150024

It is possible that there was some kind of large winged reptile that has slipped through the enormous gaps in fossil record and went extinct early in humanity's history (note 'reptile'; that doesn't mean 'dinosaur'). Imagine something not dissimilar to a monitor lizard but with longer legs relative to body size and forelegs adapted into wings in a similar way to those of bats.

Such a creature would be close to the top of the terrestrial food chain and would be seen by our ancestors as a borderline-supernatural creature.

The classic winged, quadrupedal dragon with, three limb pairs, is unlike any existing Earth vertebrate and you would have to invoke a lot of extreme mutations to explain it away. It isn't impossible - The Cambrian Explosion tells us that life can go in some weird directions and that, unless you are lucky, it can vanish without leaving behind more than a few debatable traces.

In terms of the Equestrian dragons - No, they're not dinosaurid as far as I can tell. Their body shape and general posture screams 'advanced reptile' rather than 'avian'. A dinosaurid dragon would probably look more like a griffon.