The
most renown relative of the dragons are the dinosaurs these very diverse group
of lizard like creatures who roamed the earth for millions of years resemble
not only the physical appearance of dragons but also sprouted the less known
live relative of dragons, birds. By far the biggest distinction between
dinosaurs and dragons are the wings, long membranes of skin supported by
modified arms, a characteristic which is shared among other creatures such as
bats, thesrals and pterodactyls (Which by muggle accounts are not included in
the category of dinosaurs along with plesiosaurus and other often mistaken creatures)
but which appeared in distinct events on different populations, this meaning
that the origin of the wings of those creatures is different from the origin of
the wings in dragons, but how can very similar structures have arisen at
different times and species? The answer was revealing for muggle biologists as
it allowed for a far greater understanding of evolution, they called this “Convergent
evolution”.

Convergent evolution is the creation of
different structures that have similar form or structure, that are developed when
species undergo the same environment pressure thus developing similar
structures in order to survive, the fins in sharks and dolphins; beaks in
hippogryphs, octopus and birds; scales in fishes and mermaids all these are
among other examples of convergent evolution, among these the wings in dragons,
bats and pterodactyls are just one of many. Archaeopteryx is the link between
dinosaurs, birds and dragons, the development process is as follows, archaeopteryx
developed long arms in order to climb trees, then a membrane appeared which
allowed him to glide between trees in order to avoid predators, this membrane
continued to elongate and bone structures began to appear in order to sustain
it, in birds the finger bones were used to sustain this membrane but in dragons
the bones simply elongated in order to sustain both wings and front claws
functionality, the feathers who were present long before archaeopteryx and were
shared by other dinosaurs disappeared, there is no known reason for this to
have happened as in birds feathers play both an aerodynamical role as well as a
social role in the group, many wizard biologists have the hypothesis that with
the disappearance of big predators, dragons took the lead, began to grow in
size and dominated the land over millions of years as no other predators were
around with this increase in size and their status as top of the chain
predators the colorful feathers began to disappear in order for them to be able
to remain undetected until they approached their preys, another hypothesis is
that with the development of fire feathers burned when used and thus taking rid
of them and developing hard scale like skin was a better trade, however the
fossil records and the prints of feathers and gas chamber are very hard to find
so there is no knowledge if both are linked or if feathers disappeared long
before fire breathing.