Weird & Wonderful
The Flying Dragon
Release date: 1st October 2011
In spite of their name, flying dragons are not dragons, and they don't really fly. They are really gliding lizards, and there are a number of species which live in the tropical forests of India and Asia. They spend almost all of their lives in trees, and don't often come down to ground. They are able to glide from tree to tree, travelling as far as 8 metres (25 feet), using special 'wings', which are actually extra long ribs covered with flaps of skin.
The drawing of a skeleton shows just how long those ribs are. They are not only extra long, but moveable, so that the flaps can be folded away when not needed for gliding. Flying dragons must have been specially designed to enable them to glide.
It seems impossible to believe that their extra long ribs and flaps of skin could have gradually evolved over thousands or millions of years. These lizards would have had to evolve joints to allow the ribs to open for gliding, as well as special muscles to open and close them.
Fossils of gliding lizards have been found, and they had extra long ribs like those living today, so there is no evidence that they evolved from lizards that didn't glide.
The evidence suggests that these strange lizards were designed the way they are by God the Creator.
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