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If you were to create a checklist, dragons and dinosaurs are large, reptilian and scaly, and some even have wings. One specific type of dinosaur fits the definition of “dragons”: Pterodactyls. The majority of Pterodactyl skeletons have been found in Africa and Europe. Coincidentally (or not?), stories about dragons originated in Europe and China, independently.

The argument could be made that the first people to come across these remains believed they had found the remains of a dragon. If you had no context for the creature and had never seen anything like it, you could be convinced you found something truly terrifying in our world.

Between the location Pterodactyls have been discovered, their physical characteristics and our relativelylimited knowledge of what happened millions of years ago, the difference between the taxonomies is negligible. The only thing stopping dinosaurs from being dragons is semantics.

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