There Be Dragons! part 1&2

[WonderCow]

A page relating the Papuan "Ropen" to draagons, and dragons to pterodactyls, and so the Ropen to pterodactyls.

I found this to be interesting:

The Dakota Sioux called these thunderbirds wakinyan, and pointed out collapsed river bluffs as places where the wakinyan swooped down on Unktehi, a monstrous water reptile (Pond, 1986).

The Cherokee also have legends of a similar interaction, although the thunderbird is, as I recall, called a "Tlanuwha", and the monstrous serpent the "Uktena". Unktehi and Uktena seem to be pretty similar to me. Cherokee is a Iroquoian language, rather than Siouan, so similarities that close would point to a time long ago before those languages separated one from another, I would think.

I wonder if they are describing teratorns? They went extinct at a time when Native Americans would have been on the scene. The giant lizard might have been some sort of alligator.