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A classic dragon shape, eg Smaug, approximately 6 km length from nose to tail with similar wingspan.

Ignore square cube rule due to magic and also neglect gravity as its native habitat is space.

Eyes made of crystal / gem (sapphire or emerald).

How big roughly would you expect the eyes to be?

Assume dragon is dead and body has decomposed / broken after falling from space landing like a comet, creating oblong basin type crater, buried by dust after fall and fossilized only the eyes remain, how big should they be?

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    $\begingroup$ There's no really "classic" dragon, even when limited to occidental ones. It's because it's a myth that have evolved, branched and altered generation after generation. If it's all about upscaling it you could get a range of possibilities, but don't expect accurate results. $\endgroup$
    – Tortliena
    Nov 16 at 13:40
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    $\begingroup$ (also, at such big scales people have issues comprehending whether the body "feels" proportionnate or not. You should really weigh whether it's really interesting to be accurate or if it's better to adapt to what you want to happen around that dragon) $\endgroup$
    – Tortliena
    Nov 16 at 13:43
  • $\begingroup$ I believe you meant the 'modern western dragon' or the modern European dragon when you said classic dragon. Western dragons are the ones that are mostly upscale salamanders with wings, breathing fire. You should look at some sources and choose one for clarification purposes. An eastern dragon (the snake like ones that can be VERY big) would have a different body-to-eye ratio. $\endgroup$
    – vinzzz001
    Nov 16 at 14:19
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    $\begingroup$ Given that there are no standard dragon proportions we can't meaningfully answer this question. Questions where every answer is equally valid are not a good fit for this site. $\endgroup$
    – sphennings
    Nov 16 at 15:23

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You ask how big the remnants of the eyes are after they fall from space on Earth and they get buried.

To estimate it you don't really need to know how big the eyes were.

Shattering a sapphire requires just dropping it from wrist height, as anybody who has dropped and consequently shattered a sapphire glass watch can tell you. Sapphire is highly scratch resistant but very poor shatter resistant.

Same holds for emerald, it's very easy to shatter.

That said, if they are falling from space, thus with an estimated velocity of at least 11 km/s, way higher than the impact velocity falling from wrist height, you can stay assured that they will shatter due to the impact and the thermal stress induced by the reentry.

You will have a lot of shards, scattered all around the impact location. I assume the shards would be at most finger sized.

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  • $\begingroup$ See your point, so something like jade would be less brittle... And the dragons magic of life essence providing some measure of defence against impact just not enough to survive intact (need some suspension of disbelief but want to try to minimise this ideally) $\endgroup$
    – mynci
    Nov 18 at 0:00
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Half a Meter With Allometric Equations

Allometry is the study of how different body parts or biological functions scale with size. The paper titled "The allometry and scaling of the size of vertebrate eyes" offers this equation for reptiles: log(eye diameter mm)=0.149*log(dragon mass kg)+0.868. If you know the body mass you can calculate it.

But since you don't I will give you a hypothetical example. Body mass in reptiles is calculated from allometric equations using snout-vent length (svl) and not total length. This is the length up until the base of the tail. From a general picture of Smaug, I would say that the length of the tail is roughly equal to that of the body, giving your dragon an svl of 3km. I will use an allometric equation to calculate body mass in grams for Anguimorph lizards (the most superficially dragon like) from the paper with a link below. This is log(mass g)=3.145log(svl mm)-5.058. in this case 3.145log(3,000,000)-5.058=15.3 10^15.3=2,053,744,181,765,180 grams (so 2 quadrillion grams or 2 trillion kg).

Going back to the equation for eye diameter: log(eye diameter mm)=0.149*log(2,053,744,181,765kg)+0.868 =504mm or half a meter diameter eye.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698904001646

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/geb.12398?casa_token=e-07YpzHy50AAAAA:zXxKbROZU3QJV6sGUdC_A7bH2DFExuoa1DAU3FnLbX147AlarB5hHLjplcJR9PkgI0OIRsQZ-y5cJ6od

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks thats very useful $\endgroup$
    – mynci
    Nov 17 at 23:49
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If these eyes were functional, visual-spectrum sensory organs, then they would not likely be particularly large compared to its body size. The world's largest eyes, those of the Colossal Squid are 27cm in diameter, most likely adapted to the low-light conditions in which it commonly lives.

Even blue whales have eyes that are around 11cm in diameter.

Eyes only need to be as big as necessary to achieve optimal visual acuity, while allowing for other bodily functions. Small animals have small eyes because they must trade off visual acuity for the ability to carry their eyes around, but once a certain body size is achieved, there is no benefit to having a larger eye.

So, if your dragons come from space and are 6km long, you could still expect that their eyes would be no more than 30cm in diameter, since that is as large as they would need to be to function as eyes, even in space, a long way from any stars, They may very well be considerably smaller, at around 10cm in diameter.

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  • $\begingroup$ Im looking to justify a large eye size but no more than 10m diameter. Body size important for impact crater, mass dispersal, but dont want eyes 100m across $\endgroup$
    – mynci
    Nov 18 at 0:13
  • $\begingroup$ @mynci Just make them as big as you want, then... perhaps make them compound eyes with fixed lenses. $\endgroup$
    – Monty Wild ♦
    Nov 18 at 1:50

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