--- In SkunkworksAMA_at_yahoogroups.com, Scrapper Black Dragon
<scrapperbd_at_y...> wrote:
> What I REALLY need help with; How do the wings go?
> Particularly the shoulders. This is where I'm hoping the
> wonderous Mr
>
> Hardiman and his excellent extrapolation knowledge of
> bones, muscles and physiology can figure out,
> realistically, how a
>
> dragon that has front legs, could have wings mounted to its
> back/shoulders etc. The wing structure itself I can look
> at
>
> birds or bats for a breakdown. How can a creature have
> front legs, be able to stand on its rear legs and have
> wings that
>
> were sufficiently strong enough to allow flight?
>
> Once I know what the shoulder/wing joints and associated
> bone sections should look like, I can then start collecting
> the
>
> required pieces to build this fearsome creature. I'm
> putting word out to friends at the moment to start
> acquiring relevant
>
> 'bone donors' as they encounter them (ferals, road kill,
> slaughtered stock).
>
> No immediate hurry, Jim; ponder it while you shuffle boxes
> or whatever mind numbing tasks you may have to do at work.
> A
>
> simple sketch would be more than enough and I will be
> forever grateful. Anyone else, who reckons they have the
> answer, I am
>
> _VERY_ willing for them to contribute ideas or discuss the
> project, which we can take off-group unless it proves
> exceedingly
>
> popular (in which case it will be designated OT the
> subject). When complete, I will take pictures and post
> them to the group
>
> for all to see.
>
> Scrapper, Black Dragon, fear me!
>
If I can allow myself, I love dragons (especially the realistic ones,
like in the film "dragonslayer" ot more recently, "reign of fire"),
and as an animal/science lover also, I asked also myself this question
since long.
Never forget that wings for mammals (bats), birds and reptiles (
ancient pterodactyles) always come from transformed limbs (I won't
mention here the actual gliding lezards whose "wings" are cartilage
extensions, and thus are not meant to support heavy creatures and are
not articulated, apart to fold backward when resting), where fingers
have elongated until being as long as the entire arm, or even longer
to gain a vast scale of supporting wing. In reality, the dimension of
the wing is NOT proportional to the weight of the creature : small
birds got small wings just a little longer than their body (
hummingbirds, sparrows...), but big creatures (eagles, albatross and
the giant pterodactyles recently discovered like the quetzalcoatl) got
wings that can be three, four times or much than the lenght of their
body. Imagine what span a dragon of a couple of tons could attain...
So, like I said, a wing is a transformed limb, most of the time the
forelimb only. So a dragon with four lugs should have evolved from an
terrestrial ancestor which should have got... Six lugs, most logically
four in front, the middle pair having migrated to the back of the
creature in the wing creation process. Observe a bird's wing : it has
got a big, wide shoulder blade, where powerful flight muscles attaches
themselves, and also powerful chest muscles. Now, is your dragon a
glider, or a real, actively flying creature ? This determines the mass
of those muscles, and so the dimensions of the shoulder blade. A
glider just have to suport its own weight (plus the body, of course).
But an active flyer must support far more weight, not only to be able
to maintain its height if there is no raising streams, but also to
accomplish many complex acrobatics, on place flights, and of course
take offs without any cape that could help take speed thus lift in
diving. (do not also forget that the SHAPE of the wings itself differs
profoundly wether the creature is made for almost only flights -
albatross-, long-distance flights -migratory birds like swans-, short
high-speed divings -falcons-, very short period of flights -crows-,
on-place flights -hummingbirds-, and so on)
A dragon in general should be VERY shoulder-muscular I think, even
gliders, due to their great weight, so with very wide and resisting
shoulder blades. Now for the length of the arm, forearm and finger
bones, apart from the highly-developped fingers supporting the skin
canvas, you should think of how the dragon walks : often and easily,
so the wings should completely fold to take the less possible space
and not hamper the movements, occasionnally, so they take much space,
making the dragon look bigger when seen from front, or only to rest or
to nest, so the dragon is very clumsy on earth, its wings always
lying on the ground (like in "dragonslayer", the most realistic dragon
ever done IMHO, in which the dragon was extrapolated from a normal
four-feet creature, so it didn't get arms, just legs and wings, those
ones being so big the dragon was very clumsy on the ground like a
chick, but deadly when he flew).
I hope some of these thoughts will help you choose the best skelettons
for your project, I also hope you will take photographes of it when it
will be completed so we can admire it !!
David
Received on Tue Jul 27 2004 - 21:40:40 CDT