Marine Dragon

Before prehistoric dragons, some of the early dragon species were aquatic or semiaquatic, foraging in coastal swamps and the shallow sea, living, in fact, rather like modern crocodiles. When a cataclysmic mass extinction (the KT extinction) occurred about 65 million years ago, eliminating dinosaurs and terrestrial prehistoric dragons, these aquatic dragons survived. A fortuitous mutation gave these dragons a third pair of limbs, supplementing the previous two and making them a new unique kind of vertebrate, i.e., a six-limbed animal.

Some of these new dragons recolonized the land, occupying a world vacated by dinosaurs and earlier dragons. In these terrestrial dragons, the supplementary limbs evolved into the fully functional wings of flying dragons. Other dragons stayed aquatic, specializing more and more in marine food resources — crustaceans, fish, turtles — caught in shallow coastal waters. As time passed, they adapted to a fully aquatic life, the rudimentary wings becoming fins.

The clawed limbs of terrestrial dragons were of little use in catching fish, so these evolved into flippers, like those of modern turtles. Fish were trapped in the dragon's jaws, which became larger and longer over the course of generations, and their jaws were armed with large numbers of spike-like teeth for holding their slippery prey. Wings, of course, were useless impediments in the water, andeventually dwindled and disappeared. The most celebrated example of the sea dragon may be the Loch Ness Monster.