Dragons of the Third Age

[The Saucepan Man]

At the Unexpected Party, Bilbo refers to the Were-worms of the Last Desert. And, as FingolfintheBold has pointed out, there are other references to Dragons featuring in the tales of the Shire. Although these creatures were no doubt the stuff of legends to the inhabitants of the Shire, it is not unreasonable in a mythical world to expect legendary creatures to have some basis in (internal) fact. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

I believe that there were Dragons other than Smaug and Scatha in Middle-earth during the Third Age, and later. My problem, however, with the "descendants of Smaug and Scatha" theory is that I have never seen either of them referred to as anything but male. And (though I hesitate to take the thread in this direction), they could not therefore have reproduced unless they were hermaphroditic (which is in itself, I suppose, not beyond the bounds of possibility).

Another way of reconciling the text quoted by Sharkû and the extract from the Letter quoted by Man of the Old Hope would involve other (possibly "lesser") dragons having been released, or perhaps escaping, from Angbad prior to the War of Wrath, and subsequently inter-breeding and populating other areas of Middle-earth.