*book found!* - "History" book on dragons on Earth
Hi there! A recent post triggered a memory of a book I haven't seen since the early 1990s in my high school library ...

The book's central conceit was that dragons do in fact exist on Earth, but rather than flesh-and-blood animals, they are ... forces of nature, I suppose. Dragon-shaped manifestations of natural phenomena were treated as sightings, and an elaborate species structure was built up around the different types of phenomena that the dragon shapes were seen in.

The book (we had a hardcover) was written in the earnest manner of a biologist recording observations on species -- I don't recall it breaking character or anywhere acknowledging its fictionality. It may have even been filed in the nonfiction section of the library, but time has dulled my memory on that point.

It contained a number of lovely photographic plates. The two examples that stand out in my mind were dragon-shaped cloud formations and snakelike sand dunes. (EDITED TO ADD: I believe there were no illustrations, or very few simple line drawings. Aside from the photographs, it was largely text. Suggestions in comments so far have been lavishly illustrated books.)

The book seemed reasonably old even when I was reading it. Considering it was on the shelves with the likes of The Truth About Dragons (1971), and not in especially good or bad condition, it may have been written as early as the 1960s.

It most likely had "dragon" (or some variation thereof) in the title, but I can't guarantee that 100%.

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FOUND: This is almost certainly a slightly misremembered Dragons: The Modern Infestation by Pamela Wharton Blanpied. Thanks! waywind helped me comb through some relevant Library of Congress subject listings until the title caught my eye.