Dragon Fire, Flame Fractals

In the 1937 fantasy novel The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, the major antagonist is a dragon named Smaug. Smaug hordes a great treasure but is ultimately defeated by a band of dwarves, the "men of the lake" and a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins.

Dragons are usually shown in modern times with a body like a big lizard, or a snake with two pairs of lizard-type legs, and able to emit fire from its mouth. The European dragon has bat-type wings growing from its back.

Others believe that the dragon may have had a real counterpart from which the various legends arose typically dinosaurs or other archosaurs are mentioned as a possibility but there is no physical evidence to support this claim, only alleged sightings collected by cryptozoologists. Loren Coleman argues that monitor lizards were the basis of some dragon tales and that the breath of the dragon is the fantastic imagery of the steam from the warm Montane Valley monitors emerging from a body of water into the cold air of some Asian locations.

 
[ click here to learn more ]