The flying capacity is a red herring ( 😜) though. Many cultures’ dragons do not ‘fly’ . Most of the similar creatures in manuscripts and early paintings in the West are depicted as crawling or creeping on fairly short stumpy legs. The aerial exploits have become much more prevalent with the advent of modern photographic ( manipulated) media. The wings seemed to have been borrowed from the griffin, which is an earlier and metaphorical creature.
Lots of Saints were supposed to have battled and overcome dragons, Saint George is just the one we happen to have hung onto in the West. Saint Liphard is a very local saint to a small town on the Loire , who was supposed to have defeated a local dragon, who lived in the marshy banks of the river. For those of a sceptical mind, this symbolises both the triumph of religion over superstition and paganism, and the possibility of more hygienic practices and living conditions being introduced by the Saint.
But….in Murano, the glassmaking island in the Venetian Lagoon, the local saint, Donatus, did not just vanquish a dragon, he hung its bones above the altar of the main church. They were there in the 1990’s , although the Catholic modernisers had removed all but three ribs by 2009. I went to see it several times, you could get quite close. I thought it was most probably a large crocodile, although the skull seemed more arched ( I’m not a reptile expert).
Make of that what you will.