User blog comment:Kogath/Monster Hunter: World Discussion/@comment-25083735-20191105005322/@comment-25933225-20191110105931

They might have worked for the other trees even if some of them have mistakes, but the elder dragon tree doesn't make any sense. Yes, they all drop the «same» blood... But let's remember that the jellyfishes from MH3 can drop raw meat. So what they drop can't be considered in terms of classification, because that doesn't make sense.

Let's look at Amatsu. It shares the same morphology as many Leviathans. It is just classified as an elder dragon because it's powerful. But even the wiki page of Amatsu describes it as having a Leviathan body. It is already known that the MH classes doesn't make sense (a jellyfish classified as a fish, or felynes being in the same category as Shakalakas while they are clearly closer to the Orugarons (as felines and Orugarons both belong to the carnivora clade), or the Great Jagras being classified in the same class as Zinogre while it is clearly closer to species like Ludroth...). It could give many many examples about why the MH classes doesn't make sense, and even the developpers say it, it's just a practical classification and not a reliable one. (Example : Great Jagras is considered as Fanged Wyvern because Leviathans and other lizards-like classes are not in MHW)

And of course the Elder dragon class is the worst. It's even in its own definition: «Unlike other monster types, which classify monsters by shared traits, Elder dragon are monsters that defy typical classification». They totally admit it, Elder dragon isn't a real class, it's just a medley of the very powerful monstrers, regardless of their eventual relations. So I don't know why they wanted to make an ecological tree that shows Nakarkos being related to the six limbs monsters while even a kid would know that it doesn't make sense. Everyone can see that it's a big squid and not a six limbs reptile. The other trees have some mistakes but at least they have a bit of sense.

Not all Elder dragon are outside of the regular animal kingdom : we've got squids, horses, leviathans (as big lizards). The only dragons that are really outside of the regular animal kingdom are the six limbs ones (Magala, Fatalis, etc) because they can't be put anywhere on the tree of life, unlike others monsters. There are no six limbs vertebrates, and I don't think it'd be a very reliable form of life (otherwise four-limbs vertebrate wouldn't have been kept for so long in evolution).