GREATER SEADRAGON

The majestic Greater Seadragon is oft spotted sunning itself along the southwestern coast of North America, far from it's European cousins. The walrus of the dragon world, it's aquatic lifestyle and remarkable size-second only to the Royal Dragons of eastern Asia-lend it a distinct presence in nature and in human culture.
A highly effective fisherman, the seadragon weaves through the waves with it's tail and wings as fluke and fins, dipping beneath the water to snatch unlucky fish and diving seabirds. Though the seadragon's huge size and strength do not require companionship in the hunt, it is highly social at home, believed by some scientists to be as smart as we are.
Greater Seadragons are a striking sight any time of year, but especially in early summer, when males slam horns in an attempt to push each other off of the rocky shoreline and into the churning seas below.

IDENTIFICATION

Habitat:	Rocky beaches across the southwestern coast of North America.
Size:	The largest extant dragon by height and second-largest by weight and length. Specifics TBD.
ID:	Huge dark-gray dragon, tall legs, strong musculature. Squarish jaws with large bottom tusks. Wide wings, bright in colour, decorated with contrasting rings. Bright throat-patch and tail-patch same colour as rings. Horns are heavy, curled like a ram's, metallic-gold in colour. Lacks back-spines entirely. Tail is vertically flattened at the end, like a crocodile's.
Colour:	Dark-gray all over, except the wings and throat- and tail-patches. Wings may be sunshine-orange, calypso-blue, coral-pink, or sea-green. Patches and wing-rings may be the same colours, but in a contrasting arrangement; an orange-winged dragon may have blue rings and patches.
Habits:	Spends most of it's time sunning itself on beaches, in a fashion similar to that of seals and walruses. Swims lazily near surface, using it's tail as a fluke and it's wings as additional 'fins', diving to catch prey. Somewhat clumsy, low flier, owing to it's huge size and aquatic adaptations. Highly social; lives in huge groups (numbering up to fifty dragons) called 'wharfs'.
Diet:	Fish, crustaceans, seabirds, and the occasional seal. Generally opportunistic; will take land animals if available.
Nesting:	Dramatic mating-displays involve males attempting to push each other off rocky outcroppings and into the sea using their horns. Female lays a single egg at a time, in a simple rocky nest, somewhat like a larger version of a sandpiper's. Eggs are beige-specked off-white and hatch after eight weeks. Young are precocial, and are raised communally by older members of the wharf until they are able to fish for themselves.

Similar Species:
Lesser Seadragon: While extremely similar in colours, remarkable size differences make the two seadragons unmistakable.
Also note sleeker build, upwards-curling horns of Lesser.

NOTES

The Greater Seadragon was the first dragon species I came up with for this project. Originally, they were the only living dragon species; eventually I added what were then called "greater southern seadragons" to the mix (lesser seadragons were then not dragons at all, but the real-life leafy and green seadragons, relatives of seahorses.)
These would become the lesser seadragons of the modern project, while I added a number of other species over time.

Real-life inspirations for the greater seadragons include the sociality of seals, the flight-patterns of pelicans, and the intelligence of elephants.
Whatever my mythological basis for them may have been is unfortunately lost to time and my own shitty memory.

While my stance on sapience amongst the other species changes often, depending on the day, the moon-phase and what I had for lunch, I have always imagined the seadragons as intelligent, conscious creatures. The earliest forms of this project centered around modern science's realization that seadragons were sapient, and their efforts in communicating with and understanding what was essentially an alien species.
This story is where the earliest seadragon character, Scrimshaw, originates from. I will write some more about him here later.