Tolkien’s dragons

Smaug by Angus McBride

By John D. Rateliff

There he lay, a vast red-golden dragon, fast asleep; a thrumming came from his jaws and nostrils, and wisps of smoke, but his fires were low in slumber. Beneath him, under all his limbs and his huge coiled tail, and about him on all sides stretching away across the unseen floors, lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver red-stained in the ruddy light. —J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit

J.R.R. Tolkien’s contributions to fantasy in general and dragon-lore in particular are so great as to place him in a league of his own. The whole concept of the PC party (specialists of different backgrounds working together toward a common goal) derives from Tolkien’s “Fellowship of the Rings,” while his own particular “take” on all the major fantasy races — elves, dwarves, goblins, etc. — have become the common currency for a whole generation of successors. He is the most imitated fantasist of all time, and his masterly portrayal of Smaug, “the chiefest and greatest of all calamities,” is the standard by which all other fantasy dragons should be judged.

Whereas after Grahame the tendency had been to treat dragons as witty and cute, Tolkien restored the sense of them as deadly predators. All of Tolkien’s dragons — Smaug from The Hobbit, Glorund from The Silmarillion, the wily but not over-bold Chrystophlax Dives from Farmer Giles of Ham — are clever, unscrupulous, greedy, and exceedingly dangerous. They can be bargained with, but each is capable of wiping out a small army or good-sized town all by himself. Anyone who dares to talk with one of Tolkien’s dragons had better have an escape route planned if he does not want to become the creature’s next meal.

Furthermore, Tolkien’s dragons delight in mischief: rather than kill Turin, a brave but rash and not overly clever hero, Glorund convinces him to abandon the people who rely upon him and sends him on a fool’s errand, while Smaug sows the seeds of doubt in Bilbo’s mind that shortly afterward help wreck his friendship with the dwarves. People who listen to dragons are apt to fall under their enchantment (“Smaug had rather an overwhelming personality”), and any spark of greed inside them usually fares into full life. Sometimes this dragongreed is even contagious, transmitted by contact with treasure “over whom a dragon has long brooded” — as shown in the fate of Thorin Oakenshield and to a lesser extent that of Bilbo himself (whose secret theft of the Arkenstone was a thoroughly uncharacteristic act). Similarly, Fafnir’s treasure, the hoard of the Niebelungs, seems to bring disaster to all who possess or even lay claim to it, while Beowulf’s grieving countrymen wisely decline to take any of the dragon’s hoard after his death, instead placing it all on his pyre and burying what remains in his barrow.

Finally, Tolkien’s dragons are hard to kill. Smaug destroys Dale and the Kingdom Under the Mountain, sweeping aside all resistance, and that was when he was, in his own words, “young and tender.” Later in the book we’re given a vivid description of his attack on the mountainside and burning of Lake-Town. Had he not been slain by Bard’s expert shot with a special arrow to his one secret vulnerable spot, Tolkien speculated that Sauron might have later manipulated him into destroying Rivendell. [1] Likewise, Glorund destroys the elven city of Nargothrond, effortlessly scattering and destroying its battle-tried elven warriors, while other dragons help plunder the great hidden city of Gondolin. For his part, Chrystophlax shows great reluctance to melee with anyone armed with a sword of dragon-slaying like Giles’ Claudimorax (and no wonder), but when faced with the possibility of losing his whole hoard handily massacres the Little Kingdom’s assembled knighthood, then later effortlessly puts a second army to flight. It’s possible to slay one of the Great Worms, but only by careful planning and good luck.

[1] Unfinished Tales (1980), “The Quest of Gandalf’s point of view, telling us how the contrast to Bilbo’s narrative, this bit of “alter- Erebor,” contains a behind-the-scenes look at events appeared to the wizard and the alternate Hobbit” lets us learn more about the opening chapter of The Hobbit from dwarves. In addition to offering an amusing Gandalf’s motives and plans.

CAUDIPTERYX

Meaning: Wing tail

Time: Early Cretaceous

Size: 2 ft. 3 in.

Diet: Insects

Information: One of the small theropods that show distinctive bird features. It was very lightly built and had feathers on the wings and the tail. However, the wings were too small to allow it to fly. Here it is shown in the bottom, right of the picture.

The discovery of Caudipteryx led to many intensive studies on and debate over the relationship of birds and dinosaurs. The possible positions in the debate can be summarized as follows: Caudipteryx  is either a member of the Oviraptorosauria, or a bird, or both, and birds are either dinosaurs or they are not.

Because Caudipteryx has clear and unambiguously pennaceous feathers, like modern birds, and because several cladistic analyses have consistently recovered it as a nonavian, oviraptorid, dinosaur, it provided, at the time of its description, the clearest and most succinct evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Lawrence Witmer stated: “The presence of unambiguous feathers in an unambiguously nonavian theropod has the rhetorical impact of an atomic bomb, rendering any doubt about the theropod relationships of birds ludicrous.”

However, not all scientists agreed that Caudipteryx was unambiguously non-avian, and some of them continued to doubt that general consensus. Paleornithologist Alan Feduccia sees Caudipteryx as a flightless bird evolving from earlier archosaurian dinosaurs rather than from late theropods. Jones et al. (2000) found that Caudipteryx was a bird based on a mathematical comparison of the body proportions of flightless birds and non-avian theropods. Dyke and Norell (2005) criticized this result for flaws in their mathematical methods, and produced results of their own which supported the opposite conclusion.

Other researchers not normally involved in the debate over bird origins, such as Zhou, acknowledged that the true affinities of Caudipteryx were debatable.

Arambourgiania

 

 

Meaning: Named after Camille Arambourg, who first described it in the 1950s

Time: Late Cretaceous

Size: 39 ft. 4 in. (13m)wingspan

Diet: Probably fish

Information: Scientists continue finding bigger and bigger pterosaur bones and announcing that this must have been the biggest animal that could possibly fly. The current record holder is Arambourgiania.

The biggest pterosaurs are not known from complete specimens, so all the figures you see on this subject are only estimates based on extrapolation from smaller, more complete finds. Currently, the record holders amongst pterosaurs (and, indeed, all volant animals) are the giant azhdarchids, enormous pterosaurs that existed across the world in the Cretaceous. The best known of these is Quetzalcoatlus nothropi from the Javelina Formation of Texas. Known from a stupendously big humerus and other fragmentary elements, the wingspan of this animal is estimated at 10 - 11 m with a shoulder height of 2.5 m when it stood on the ground.

However, other azhdarchids known from even scantier material hint at bigger animals. Arambourgiania philidelphae, a pterosaur known from a solitary neck vertebrae and scrappy wing elements from Jordan, may have achieved a wingspan of 11 - 13 m. However, Hatzagopteryx thambema is the current record holder for the largest pterosaur known: with only a few pieces of skull and a couple of scrappy limb elements, estimates for this critter put it between 12 - 14 m across the wings.

Death of the Dinosaurs

 

Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia (3D/2D)

This documentary-style narrative focuses on the history, evolution and extinction of the dinosaurs. In larger-than-life fashion, audiences will explore a subject matter whose mystique and appeal are unquestioned.

Dinosaurs are amongst the most fascinating animals to have ever walked the Earth. We are captivated by their enormous size and intrigued by the fact that they disappeared millions of years ago. DINOSAURS 3D will take audiences on an unprecedented and unique 3D journey into the world of the largest known dinosaurs and, in the process, explore some of the great paleontological discoveries of modern time.

Done in close collaboration with the foremost scientists of the domain, the movie will show never seen before computer generated footage of the Giganotosaurus and the Argentinosaurus to name a few. At the moment of initiating this extraordinary project, one question comes to mind: "Is the giant screen big enough?"

Alternate Title(s): Formerly Dinosaurs of Patagonia

Dinos in D&D

POPULAR CULTURE AND SCIENCE

Because dinosaurs are an important part of popular culture and hence are easily recognizable, the study of them serves as an apt vehicle for understanding how science is applied to their study. A starting point for applying the science of dinosaur studies is to understand what is or is not a dinosaur, using a definition as a prompt for asking questions, as a large number of animals regarded as dinosaurs actually are not. A dinosaur is defined initially as a reptile-like or bird-like animal, with an upright posture, that spent most (perhaps all) of its life on land and lived from about 230–65 million years ago. Dinosaurs then can be classified by either a Linnaean or phylogenetic (cladistic) classification system. The cladistic method is preferred because it better expresses hypotheses about evolutionary relatedness within dinosaurs as a group. These hypotheses are best described through a cladogram, a diagram that shows ancestor-descendant relationships.




The two sciences most commonly associated with dinosaur studies are geology and biology, which are also augmented by other sciences, such as chemistry, physics, math, and computer science. Their use illustrates how the interrelation of all sciences can contribute to a field of study. Despite the apprehension of many people about the sciences, especially those that frequently use symbols and numbers, it is necessary to know a minimal amount about them to better understand dinosaurs. Professional paleontologists typically have to know some facets of all scientific disciplines. In many cases they also must be illustrators, writers, public speakers, and deal with the physical and logistical difficulties of performing fieldwork in remote locations.



Popular culture, such as books, TV shows, movies, artwork, and Web pages, reflect public ideas about dinosaurs that may or may not be based on scientific reality but they can follow general scientific trends. Whenever encountering these images of dinosaurs, the question of “What evidence justifies these depictions?” should be asked. However, of all dinosaur artwork, scientific illustration is the most important with regard to dinosaur studies and combines scientific knowledge with artistic abilities to convey accurate information.



Math is an essential tool for dinosaur studies and is expressed mostly through measurements, which are made through the international standard of the metric system. Math can be used in nearly every aspect of dinosaur studies, as demonstrated by the use of some simple calculations of estimated dinosaur weights based on their models. Such step-by-step methods help to show that math has practical uses in dinosaur studies and can be made more understandable in an applicative context.