The older tales mentioned two dragons who were perhaps intentionally conflated.

According to Every, one example may be " the myth of St. George " and other stories about saints battling dragons, which were " modelled no doubt in many cases on older representations of the creator and preserver of the world in combat with chaos ".

In antiquity, dragons were mostly envisaged as serpents, but since the Middle Ages, it has become common to depict them with legs, resembling a lizard.

In many Asian cultures dragons were, and in some cultures still are, revered as representative of the primal forces of nature, religion and the universe.

Komodo dragons were first recorded by Western scientists in 1910.

Saliva samples were analyzed by researchers at the University of Texas who found 57 strains of bacteria growing in the mouths of three wild Komodo dragons including Pasteurella multocida.

Komodo dragons were first documented by Europeans in 1910, when rumors of a " land crocodile " reached Lieutenant van Steyn van Hensbroek of the Dutch colonial administration.

In May 2009, there were thirteen European, two African, thirty-five North American, one Singaporean and two Australian institutions that kept Komodo dragons.

More attempts to exhibit Komodo dragons were made, but the lifespan of these creatures was very short, averaging five years in the National Zoological Park.

Studies done by Walter Auffenberg, which were documented in his book The Behavioral Ecology of the Komodo Monitor, eventually allowed for more successful managing and reproducing of the dragons in captivity.

There were excessive whirlwinds, lightning storms, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky.

Each storey finishes with a projecting roof, after the Chinese manner, originally covered with ceramic tiles and adorned with large dragons ; a story is still propagated that they were made of gold and were reputedly sold by George IV to settle his debts.

The truth is that the dragons were made of wood painted gold, and simply rotted away with the ravages of time.

Two gold Wessex dragons were later granted as supporters to the arms of Dorset County Council in 1950.

Among his many other wide-ranging non-fiction works were The Great Monkey Trial ( about the Scopes Trial ), The Ragged Edge of Science, Energy and Power, The Heroic Age of American Invention, The Day of the Dinosaur ( which argued, among other things, that evolution took hold after Darwin because of the Victorian interest spurred by recently popularized dinosaur remains, corresponding to legends of dragons ), and The Evolution of Naval Weapons ( a U. S. government textbook ).

The remaining four, according to Gandalf, were destroyed by dragons.

Only dragons rivalled their capacity for ferocity and destruction, and during the First Age of Middle-earth, they were among the most feared of Morgoth's forces.

It is not entirely clear whether the term " Urulóki " referred only to the first dragons such as Glaurung that could breathe fire but were wingless, or to any dragon that could breathe fire, and thus include Smaug.

Other dragons were present at the Fall of Gondolin.

The first winged dragons were coeval with Ancalagon the Black.

Though not all dragons were mentioned by name in the official texts, names coming from sources other than Tolkien are said not to be " canonical ".

In the Qin Dynasty, the 5-clawed dragon was assigned to represent the Emperor while the 4-clawed and 3-clawed dragons were assigned to the commoners.

McKean created 6 images for Royal Mail's Mythical Creatures collection, which featured depictions of mythical creatures found in British folklore, including dragons, unicorns, giants, pixies, mermaids, and fairies.

The spell that created the Dry Land, which was intended to create an artificial afterlife, is broken, and the land itself returned to the dragons, from whom it had been stolen thousands of years ago.

In Tyrol, folklore attributed fairy rings to the fiery tails of flying dragons ; once a dragon had created such a circle, nothing but toadstools could grow there for seven years.

These excesses created rips ( called " rifts ") between the dreams and the dragons once again woke up massively ; new cataclysm, end of the Second Age.

Siberys created the dragons, Eberron created humanoids and other " lower races ", and Khyber created the " demons " of the world.

The player's characters faced some of the toughest creatures in the AD & D universe, in addition to a number of new and formidable critters created specifically for the game, such as the Pets of Kalistes ( intelligent magic spiders that could see invisible enemies and whose venomous bite had a-2 save ) and the terrifying Minions of Bane ( which had the magic resistances of demons and the breath weapons of dragons ).

Lorac stayed behind and once all of his people had been safely evacuated, attempted to use a Dragon Orb, a device created by mages to control dragons.

Dracoliches are created from evil dragons through powerful necromantic magics.

In the fourth edition mythology, Io created dragons and dragonborn.

It is speculated that the undersized wings were intentionally created in the dragons by Kitti Ping to reduce the surface area of a dragon that is exposed to possible Thread injury, and that the telekinetic abilities were intended to make up for the loss of wingsail.

Jenny Hanivers have been created to look like devils, angels and dragons.

When Bid ' daum was large enough to carry Eragon they flew around Alagaësia and created peace between the dragons and elves.

He was killed in Inheritance by Arya with a Dauthdaert, 12 spears created by the elves during Du Fyrn Skulblaka made for killing dragons.

When the work was completed, three dragons rushed against the wall, and while the two of them which attacked those parts of the wall built by the gods fell down dead, the third forced its way into the city through the part built by Aeacus.

* planoforming spacecraft, which are crewed by humans telepathically linked with cats to defend against the attacks of malevolent entities in space, who are perceived by the humans as dragons, and by the cats as gigantic rats, in " The Game of Rat and Dragon ".

Narratives about dragons often involve them being killed by a hero.

While sleeping, Kerafyrm is guarded by four ancient dragons ( warders ) in " The Sleeper's Tomb ".

When all four dragons are defeated by players and are dead at the same time, The Sleeper awakes, triggering a rampage of death.

His reputation spreads across the kingdom, and he is rewarded by the King with a sword named Caudimordax (" Tailbiter ")— which turns out to be a powerful weapon against dragons.

An article by Martin Gardner revealed that Dr. Walter Siegmeister used the pseudonym ` Bernard ', but not until the publishing of Walter Kafton-Minkel's Subterranean Worlds: 100, 000 years of dragons, dwarves, the dead, lost races & UFOs from inside the Earth, in 1989, did the full story of Bernard / Siegmeister become well known.

Komodo dragons eat by tearing large chunks of flesh and swallowing them whole while holding the carcass down with their forelegs.

Although there are anecdotes of unprovoked Komodo dragons attacking or preying on humans, most of these reports are either not reputable or caused by defensive bites.

Even seemingly docile dragons may become aggressive unpredictably, especially when the animal's territory is invaded by someone unfamiliar.

Ambrosius was rumoured to be such a child, but when brought before the king, he revealed the real reason for the tower's collapse: below the foundation was a lake containing two dragons who destroyed the tower by fighting.

* The Nibelungenlied, an epic poem in Middle High German, tells the saga of Siegfried / Sigurd, who killed a dragon on the Drachenfels ( Siebengebirge ) (" dragons rock "), near Bonn at the Rhine and of the Burgundians and their court at Worms, at the Rhine and Kriemhild's golden treasure, which was thrown into the Rhine by Hagen.

Taoist temples in southern China and Taiwan may often be identified by their roofs, which feature Chinese dragons and phoenix made from multi-colored ceramic tiles.

Afterward, she left Corinth and flew to Athens in a golden chariot driven by dragons sent by her grandfather Helios, god of the sun.

However, in Ars Magica the " Medieval paradigm "-the collection of folk beliefs and superstitions-is correct ; this means that the beliefs and superstitions of the medieval period are existent reality: lost children are really abducted by Faeries, sickness and crop failure are caused by Demons, Angels help the righteous, and dragons and other mythical creatures exist.