Dragon

Bofur: Airborne fire breather, teeth like razors, claws like meat hooks, extremely fond of precious metals - Bilbo: Yes, I know what a dragon is. Dragons are legendary creatures that resemble over-sized lizards, snakes, or crocodiles, but with occasional extra limbs, and the ability to fly, and are thought to have other special powers such as the ability to breathe fire. In essence, they are a catch-and-all term rarely used by actual anthropologists anymore as it describes a variety of entities unrelated aside from having scales; this ranges from the demonic western dragons to the Asian lion-camel-clam-carp-gods (also known as lung) to the various mutant-chickens of the Mesoamericans.

Evidence of dragons' existence has never surfaced except in mythology, legend, fantasy novels, role-playing games, and the imaginations of some cryptozoologists, but there exists a subculture that believes in them. There is also a subculture that thinks they are dragons or identifies with them in a similar manner to furry fandom and a rather larger subculture that knows they do not exist but deeply wishes they did.

The seemingly worldwide nature of dragon myths has led some people to engage in truly bizarre speculation about the origins of humanity, or about "species memory" and such. Some animals and plants have been named after the dragon, like the leafy seadragon, dragonfly, komodo dragon, snapdragon, and Dracaena.

Dubiously, David E. Jones claimed in his book An Instinct for Dragons that the mythological origin of dragons is in our hominid ancestors' ancient fears of predators such as great cats, snakes, and large raptor birds that became hard-wired in our brains.

In Christianity
Belief in the existence of dragons is a prerequisite for Biblical literalists. In some cases, but not all, the word dragon was mistranslated in various Bible translations. Dragons appear in both the Old Testament: and New Testament:
 * "Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps."
 * "I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls."
 * Book of Psalms:, , ,
 * Book of Jeremiah:, , , , ,
 * Book of Isaiah:, , , , ,
 * "… Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers…"
 * "Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked: I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls."
 * "And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness."
 * "And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness."
 * "And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads." Dragons also appear in several other passages in Revelation.

Indeed, it would even seem to become difficult for Bible believers who are not strictly literalists to not believe in dragons when dragons are intermixed with alleged historical events or prophesies, such as in Jeremiah 51:37, "And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling place for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant."

Young Earth creationism
Some young Earth creationists (YEC) have claimed that the existence of dragons in various human mythologies is evidence for humans and dinosaurs co-existing. YEC believes that a bombardier beetle spewing a 100°C gooey liquid is evidence that dragons were real. Ignore here that the earliest depictions of dragons were snake-like and did not look at all like dinosaurs or the most popular four legs and two wings (rather than six legs, two wings and two elytra for beetles). Using the same reasoning, they presumably also believe in fairies and trolls. Saner heads, most notably historian have proposed a more sensible hypothesis on the dinosaur-dragon connection, namely that dragons and other legendary creatures might have been inspired by the fossil remains of prehistoric animals. Misidentification of extant animal remains by ancient peoples is also a likely source of cryptids, such as the conflation of elephant skulls with the Cyclops of Greek mythology.

The dragon that would not go away
Saint George and the Dragon is an extra-Biblical legend that is important to numerous regional sects of Christianity. The George in the legend was an actual historical figure (George of Lydda, a Greek-born Roman Christian soldier ), but the legend can be traced to pre-Christian mythologies (Greek: Jason and Medea in Greek:  Greco-Egyptian:  and others).

In Chinese medicine
Villagers in modern-day Henan Province in China have been grinding "dragon" fossils for use in traditional Chinese medicine. The fossils have been described as coming from dinosaurs or from various mammals. Evidentially, dinosaurs (other than birds) have never co-existed with humans.

The 'bones' have been ground up into tea for decades, a practice recorded to have occurred with ancient peoples across the world. When asked why so many Chinese still believe in dragons, China's premier dinosaur hunter Xu Xing responded: How many Americans still don't believe in evolution?