the pentadactyl limb

(forelegs only for ease)

okay so the dog and horse could be a bit off but as far as I'm aware this is all accurate.

Someone was asking on neopound about how dragon legs would fold and someone said like a dog or a horse and someone said horses and dogs were very different and horses had more joints than dogs and generally the subject was very iffy so I thought I'd make skeletal structure a little clearer to all.

most animals limbs are based off the same design - humerus, radius + ulna, carpals and metacarpals and phalanges. The humerus is your upper arm, radius and ulna are forearm, carpals are your wrist, metacarpals are all the bones in your palm (generally) and phalanges are fingers. It's called the pentadactyl limb which means five-fingered. different animals use this limb for different things and as such it has evolved to suit their needs. ie, bats fingers have elongated and grown hollow for flight, horses stand on their middle nail for speed, dolphins have fins for swimming, moles have broad, clawed feet for digging, humans have opposable thumbs for picking things up. birds are evolved from lizards so even they have this skeletal structure.

someone mentioned komodo dragons on neopound as a reference to dragons but gawd, have you ever looked at those things walk? I drew out the basic structure from a skeleton picture and couldn't work out how their elbows bent. after watching a few videos on youtube of komodos i came to the conclusion that it must be very uncomfortable to be a komodo. put your hands on your desk, facing forward at about meters width and then raise your forearm so it's 90 degrees to your hand. Now try walking. Yay, you're a komodo!

it's not the first time I've come across people that have no idea about basic bones - it took me ages to persuade one boyfriend that dogs had the same bones as humans. a basic understanding of bones helps to understand how things bend and gets you leaps and bounds onto drawing more accurate anatomy. i hope i helped you a little.

hmm i might draw this out a bit better at some point.