It's time to look at the 7th and 8th dragons in our list, two species with a strong history together, but very different when it comes to dentition-
the Ridgebacks and Ashfangs
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Ridgebacks
Original design and diet notes
Out of all of the old teeth designs, I think the ones I had for the Ridgebacks made the MOST logical sense, wolf teeth fit them really well!
Do they really have to change at all?
The answer is no they don't! I'll be refining some things, a few little alterations, but otherwise they get the job done and have no need to change!
New design
The one thing I emphasised a little is the power in the molars and premolars, since although Ridgebacks started out with hunting as their primary food source, a shift was made to include more veggies into their diet quite early on.
While these guys might fall short in this post in terms of wow factor, I'm excited to show you their volcanic cousins (see below ( ¬ᴗ¬))
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Ashfangs
Original design and diet notes
The Ashfangs are interesting because not only do they exclusively live on an island seperate to the main continent, it's been their homeland for some time (in modern day ashfangs reside there exclusively). Which means their teeth will certainly be specialised for living on the Basalt Island.
Yet again, old design is quite boring- especially because fangs is literally in their name! Where are they!?? come on now
Quite a bit of Basalt Island is bamboo forest. It's quite large but with a society of dragons living there it may not be quite large enough to have an ecosystem that can support larger mammals in high numbers, so most protein will come from the coasts. As a fun little addition- the Ashfangs are one of the only two clans to include salt as a staple ingredient in their dishes (preservation and seasoning mostly).
New design
Considering their teeth are their namesakes, I really tried to have fun with ashfang teeth. They're quite similar to nightscales in the way they're very pointy for fishing and cracking shells. For the bamboo, I looked at pandas and noticed that carnivorous bear teeth actually seem to do just fine at eating bamboo, I just gave them nice spiky molars for grinding.
As an extra, I made their canines sit a little differently than the other dragons so they protrude out of the face more. Now that -fang part really shows through in their design!
That's it for those two, the next post will be 9 and 10/10!
