For some time now... more than a year, I have been thinking about a major update to my dragon project and on the way back from Birmingham, in conversation with @TimVersteeg4 I was finally able to flesh it out more.
Please welcome an entirely new kind of dragon! my initial concept for dragons as living animals was rather straight forward: they are varanid lizards of a wyvern build that inspired the many myths around the world when it comes to large, especially flying reptiles. However when I started this project it was 2011 and I had only a fraction of understanding, knowledge and skill I have now.
One of the main issues I have these days is that this concept makes western scholars look more competent than their contemporaries elsewhere as their descriptions and images come closest to the anatomy of my Draconiformes. I already played before with the disconnect between myth and animal in this project but when we are honest: there isn't even a reason to call Asian dragons dragons.
They have little in common with our European idea both in build and characterization So I did something that I should have done from the start: make dragons and grade, not a clade.
Although not even that would be a fair term. Working title for this patch is: "Dragons - and the animals behind them". As you can see in this rough phylogeny, dragons are now polyphyletic.
We might call these animals dragons or sea serpents, but they don't form a natural group. This also means I will need to rework my Natrixosaurs, sea serpents, which were originally mosasauroids.
The new clade I add here is Shenlongsauridae which are close relatives of the earless monitor, a relatively little known animal from Borneo. These animals will mostly be found in Asia but European members are planned too. These guys are semiaquatic, elongated critters and this first one, is a possible inspiration for many dragon myths in China.
Then again I don't just wanna copy folklore in this project. I partially started this because I felt that other spec evo depiction just put realistic texture and scientific names on top of mythology. Well, let me know what you think!
P.s. this also means that I will somewhat prune the group of dragons that beforehand were supposed to have inspired Asian dragon folklore. Confuciosaurus might not make a come back! There will be however an overlap in their cultural influence.
For people unaware: since 2011 I have a spec evo project involving dragons. Designs and lore have changed quite a bit over the years but at its core it stayed fairly simple. Importantly I try to make these animals hard-spec: as plausible as possible while still being possible inspirations for the myths we find across various cultures. And yes: monitor lizards in this are basically flightless dragons as their.
