SOURCE: "Red Nails" by Robert E. Howard  (Weird Tales, July-December, 1936)

DESCRIPTION: "Through the thicket was thrust a head of nightmare and lunacy. Grinning jaws bared rows of drippnig yellow tusks; above the yawning mouth wrinkled a saurian-like snout. Huge eyes, like those of a python a thousand times magnified, stared unwinkingly at the petrified humans clinging to the rock above it. Blood smeared the scaly, flabby lips and dripped from the huge mouth.
The head, bigger than that of a crocodile, was further extended on a long scaled neck on which stood up rows of serrated spikes, and after it, crushing down the briars and saplings, waddled the body of a titan, a gigantic, barrel-bellied torso on absurdly short legs. The whitish belly almost raked the ground, while the serrated backbone rose higher than Conan could have reached on tiptoe. A long spiked tail, like that of a gargantuan scorpion, trailed out behind." ("Red Nails" by Robert E. Howard)

NOTES: The forest dragons live in the woods surrounding the cliffs of Xuchotl. Conan defeats it by using poisonous fruit to slow it down.

HISTORY: Is it a T. Rex? When Barry Windsor Smith illustrated this story in Savage Tales #2-3 (1973) he drew it that way.

Frank Frazetta

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