OK, let’s get something straight: We’re not saying dragons ever existed anywhere outside our imaginations. But the idea of dragons has captivated humans for centuries.
In theaters Dec. 13, J.R.R. Tolkien’s archetypal fire-breathing villain Smaug dominates in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the second installment of Peter Jackson’s trilogy based on the novel.
That got us thinking: Could science explain any of Smaug’s fantastical features? We went to the man who’d know, paleontologist and Tolkien aficionado Henry Gee, who devoted an entire chapter to dragons in his book The Science of Middle-Earth.
