Many confuse Dragon Pokémon with Dragon-Type Pokémon. “Type” indicates the energy a Pokémon expresses in its phenotype, and has no phylogenetic importance. Dragon-Type Pokémon simply expresses the Dragon Type for different reasons that might be related to their environment, behavior, or more.
Dragon Pokémon are known to have six limbs, and in most members of the group one pair of arms evolved into wings (usually visible only in the last ontological evolution stage). A second pair of arms is also found in Machamp (Machus superpoweris), which is currently considered the closest relative of Dragon Pokémon inside the Reptile Pokémon group. This placement is still controversial, as many researchers believe Machamp to be a very derived Humanoid Pokémon, or a close relative of humans, despite the reptilian features.
The newly discovered prehistoric Dragon Pokémon species Intimidrake (Drakinus flightlessium) shows very peculiar wing anatomy. The hand forming the wing is composed of three long fingers, possibly having a claw at the end of each, and the wing itself seems too small to allow for flight. This has been interpreted as a display feature, the membrane was probably very colorful and used to attract mates and scare away enemies.
by GebF
15 Comments
Actual temu charizard
Didn’t happen
Intimidrake is such a good name 👌✨
Reshiram found dead in a ditch
First of all love the design for your Intimidrake. Very creative~
I miss dragon types in previous gens when most of them have wings. And I yern for more new dragon types to have wings and not be…theropod shaped.
But Pokemon isn’t my franchise so it is what it is.
i love the explanation in the caption
Re: your title
That’s actually a bit of a debate, and I personally fall on the other side of the issue, in favor of the down from the trees idea.
The basal ancestors of the paravians for example seems to have been four winged and quite far down the path of flight, which we can see with how many of those weirdos are around (microraptor, anchiornis, the other one I’m drawing a blank on) which suggests to me flight was the basal condition, and the wings of flightless troodontids and dromaeosaurs were repurposed from flying ancestors.
Where this gets interesting are the wings of non-paravian dinosaurs.
With oviraptorosaurs they’re fellow maniraptorans and close relatives of the paravians, seems reasonable enough to conclude they had something similar going on in their history, especially since they seem to have a similar trend of being smaller and more gracile the more basal you go. Was there potentially a flying four winged basal Oviraptorosaur? Probably not but it would be neat.
And you get to Ornithomimosaurs. I know very little about them. Kinda just a shrug from me. I do remember that they have conspicuously ratite-like feathering, which suggests to me personally they went through a similar process of having more traditional pennaceous feathers, and then reducing them to the ratite shag, however again they’re my biggest blind spot when it comes to theropods so I could just be totally wrong about that.
Anyways I like your cool Pteranizard. Apologies for the unsolicited diatribe about wing evolution.
Oh my god I love these. Drakuge literally looks like one of the original 151, it feels like he reminds me of so many of them somehow but is completely unique at the same time. And his expression reminds me of the early Pokemon Adventures manga. Also I feel like the way you named them is perfect.
11/10 please make more
This is awesome🔥
This is so cool! I love actual biology with video game creatures!
*Dragonite is suing Intimdidrake for copyright reasons*
I love how this addresses both Pokemon evolution and irl evolution. (Really wouldn’t Pokemon evolution be more like “metamorphosis”?)
This is actually a sick design, I love it
If they can have a mimikyu, gimmie Intimidrake.
By this logic graveler is also a dragon