#smok wawelski

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Cykl Baltazar Gąbka matching icons

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smok wawelski

[fundinofactoftheday]

Dinofact #53

The largest carnivorous archosaur of late Triassic central Europe, Smok wawelski may be a rauisuchid (large predatory Triassic archosaur), prestosuchid (active terrestrial Triassic apex predator), ornithosuchid pseudosuchian (distant relative of crocodilians), or a primitive theropod dinosaur. However, its relation to other archosaurs has not been thoroughly studied, so its status as dinosaur, crocodile, or other remains a mystery.

Source: wikipedia

[saritawolff]

#Archovember Day 21 - Smok wawelski

Named after the Wawel Dragon of Polish legend, the enigmatic Smok wawelski is in fact so enigmatic that the mythical beast is still what pops up first when you google it. I had been avoiding including Smok in Archovember for the past three years simply because we Just Don’t Know what it is. And it’s a little hard to draw something when all paleontologists know about it is “well, it’s an archosaur? And it’s uh… big?”

Living in Late Triassic Poland, Smok wawelski was larger than any known Triassic or early Jurassic predatory archosaur. Estimated at 5 to 6 metres (16 to 20 ft) in length, it was certainly the apex predator of Europe. Examination of Smok coprolites (fossilized poop) indicate that it was able to crush and swallow bone… including it’s own teeth which had likely broken during feeding! It was a generalized predator, feeding on a variety of fish, temnospondyls, and dicynodonts, and was able to extract the salt and marrow from these animals’ bones. Other than that, it has not been thoroughly studied. It could be some kind of pseudosuchian, or it could be an early theropod dinosaur. We Just Don’t Know. But it sure must have been a formidable dragon either way.

Smok would have lived alongside the neotheropod dinosaur Liliensternus, the rauisuchids Polonosuchus and Teratosaurus, a silesaurid, temnospondyls, and the elephant-sized dicynodont Lisowicia.

[blyszczopies]

[ID: a chart presenting five stamps with pictures depicting the Wawel Dragon legend. the first stamp shows the dragon in its cave, confidently breathing fire. it is green with darker stripe going from its nose to the tip of its tail. it has a snake shaped head with two upward horns, and spikes on its forehead, back and tail.

in the second stamp the dragon is curiously poking at the sheep standing in front of its cave. the shadow under the sheep has a skull shape. the third stamp shows the sheep. it has X marks instead of eyes and it has a visible sewing mark on its chest.

the fourth stamps portrays the dragon in its cave, taking a closer look at the sheep. it is holding it close it its face, with one eye squinted. in the fifth stamp, the dragon is drinking water from the lake. its body is swollen, as if had already drunk a lot of water.

the stamps are put together in a flipped letter C pattern. in the space between the first and last stamp is a doodle of the Wawel Dragon sitting with a hurt expression, with its body patched up. on its left is a strip of all the stamps in their real-life size. the close the space between the first and last stamp, giving an impression of a prison bar. End ID]

an assignment from my first semester of college, we had to make stamps featuring a polish legend of our choice. of course i choose the Wawel Dragon (Smok Wawelski) because i wanted to draw a dragon.

the legend says that long time ago the city of Cracow was plagued by a dragon. it would eat all of the citizens’ sheep and cattle. many knights have tried killing the beast, but they never succeeded and would instead get eaten by it. but one day a simple shoemaker left a sheep skin filled with sulfur for the dragon to eat. and it did eat it, thinking it was real a real animal. the sulfur burned its throat, so the dragon kept drinking water until it drank so much it exploded.

and yeah the shoemaker was generously rewarded but its not about him lol

[confusedhadrosaur]

Day 21: Smok wawelski

[aspivampi]

more smoczek

[mapo-leon]

Queer coded smok wawelski? More likely than you think

A najlepsze jest to że faktycznie they were coded by a queer (me)

[lady-nightmare]

Legendy Polskie. Film SMOK. Allegro

“We can negotiate with the dragon.

How can you negotiate with a gangster!!!”

Context: In ancient times, the Wawel Dragon terrorised King Krak’s city. The beast required ransoms of cattle, while other sources insist that it only devoured virgins.The Wawel Dragon was a beast which lived in a den under Wawel Hill and terrorised all the inhabitants of King Krak’s town. They had to feed to the monster by giving him offerings of cattle, while other tales speak of that hellspawn eating nothing but virgins. No knight could vanquish the monster, until a young shoemaker Skuba outsmarted the Dragon. He stuffed a ram’s hide with sulphur and pitch, and put the doctored ram in front of the Dragon’s Den. The monster caught the bait and devoured the ram. Immediately, he felt a bad pain and burning in the throat. To quench his thirst, the Dragon started to drink from the Vistula River. However, as water cannot extinguish burning sulphur, the gases produced by the fires inside him made the beast explode. All the townsfolk revelled in the news and the heroic shoemaker was properly rewarded. To commemorate the vanquishing of the Dragon, Bronisław Chromy designed a sculpture of the beast which now stands by the river at the foot of Wawel, near the Dragon's Den.

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I want what these bitches have

[nazrigar]

Year of the Dragon 2024

A spin off of my Pop Culture Paleoart series, and a tribute to the concept of the dragon, from the mythological beasts that inspire awe and wonder, to the plethora of dragons of pop culture... and of course the great reptiles that either probably inspired them or are named after.

From the lovable bearded dragon to the mighty Komodo dragon, and the creatures of the past that we also name after the awe-inspiring creature.

I'll leave y'all to guess which dragon is which in this piece, but I can give you the names of the dragons of our world:

Komodo Dragon

Bearded Dragon

Common Flying Dragon (Draco volans)

Sailfin Dragon

And for the past:

Quetzalcoatlus

Smok wawelski

Dracovenator

Guidraco

Ikrandraco

Guanlong

[have-you-been-here]

Smok Wawelski Statue, Kraków, Poland

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Smok Wawelski (Archosaur)

This guy right here is called “Smok Wawelski”, named after a dragon in a popular polish legend (the name translates to “Dragon of Wawel”). It lived during Late Trassic on the territory of, what is now, Poland (more specifically a village called Lisowice). He’s estimated to be around 5 or 6 meters (aka 16 or 20 feet) in length, its skull is 50-60 centemeters long (20-24 inches).

Smok lived alongside a synapsid called Lisowicia (named after the village). It was most likely hunted down pretty frequently by Smok. Here’s a picture of it below. 

What’s interesting about Smok is that nobody really knows what type of archosaur it is. It could be a rauisuchid, prestosuchid, an ornithosuchid pseudosuchian or a theropod dinosaur. Here are some reconstructions.  

Smok’s one of my favorite prehistoric creatures so I figured I’d make a post about it :) I still don’t really understand how to use tumblr properly but this seems fun.

[wyverewings]

Smok (Stiliodraco ignis)

Size: 60 feet long

Habitat: mountains, tundras, forests, volcanoes

Coloration: red, brown, green, gold, black

Diet: mammoths, behemoths, pretty much megafauna in general

Magical Abilities: fire breath, flight

After those weird and wacky wyrms and wyverns, it’s about time we move onto the most recognizable archetype of dragon, the four legged flying firebreathers, the most basic of bitches, the many children of Smaug, the… well, they don’t actually have a name. See, this archetype is so omnipresent that it’s seen as the definition of dragon, despite the existence of so many other interesting types of dragon. It’s not like I hate seeing them or anything, but can we get some wyrms in media? Please?

Anyway, the specific name “Smok” is from Polish folklore, and most would recognize it from Smok Wawelski. I can’t think of a better name for this archetype, so it’s what I’m using. This one’s more based on modern fantasy dragons than medieval dragons, as the first dragon that resembles the modern idea of a dragon was drawn in 1260. Actually, I was originally gonna have the smok be an ice dragon and the fire dragon named “Urolok” from Tolkien’s elven language, but when the nidhogg became the ice dragon, I used Smok for this one, which will also probably piss Tolkien’s lawyers off less.

Something I wanted to do with the design is make them look weirder than the DnD red dragon design clones, but not extremely bizarre. And I think I managed that! I based them somewhat off of the thorny devil, which I’m kinda surprised I haven’t seen a dragon that resembles one. Their spiked wings are very much based off of several dragons in Monster Hunter. I very much imagine these fellows to be big megafauna hunters, and also probably nature’s defense against the forest-eating behemoths (which aren’t dragons in this setting, so they won’t be in this field guide, sorry). They actually wouldn’t care for humans, not just because of a moral opposition to eating creatures that can talk, but because humans are just so small that they don’t have enough nutritional value for them to be worth hunting down.