Could Dragons Have Existed If Evolution Had Taken A Different Turn?
Group Effort Dragons don't exist (as far as we know), but some of their individual characteristics can be found throughout the animal kingdom. iStock (2); Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images; Richard T. Nowitz/Photo Researchers A reptile expert examines the evidence. It would have taken quite a few turns for natural selection to have produced dragons, but if you're willing to stretch a bit, most classic dragon characteristics do exist in other species. They just don't come packaged in one animal. First up on the dragon checklist: flying. Dragon wings are usually depicted in one of two ways-a third pair of limbs connected to the backbone, or webbed forearms. Jack Conrad, a paleontologist and reptile expert at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, thinks the latter is more plausible. "It seems that six appendages are very unlikely in vertebrates," he says. "The only thing close to having six limbs are these frogs in the...