Dragons in Middle-earth

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J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium features dragons based on those of European legend, but going beyond them in having personalities of their own, such as the wily Smaug, who has features of both Fafnir and the Beowulf dragon. Dragons appear in the early stories of The Book of Lost Tales, including the mechanical war-dragons of The Fall of Gondolin. Tolkien went on to create Smaug, a powerful and terrifying adversary, in The Hobbit. Dragons are only mentioned in passing in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's conception of the dragon has been adopted both in games loosely based on his Middle-earth writings, and by other fantasy authors. Several taxa, both extinct and living, have been named after Tolkien's dragons, including species of girdled lizards, shield bugs, and ants which have been named Smaug.

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