Dragons are eating dinosaurs for lunch.

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Dinosaurs — so beloved, so overexposed, so marketed-to-death for the past decade or two — are finally lumbering toward extinction. Go, already. By the time you’re a Gummi Worm, bedspread, and Steven Spielberg sequel, you’re not exactly hip anymore.

In the dinosaur’s place, firebreathing and triumphant, comes the dragon.

The scaly beasts are everywhere. You’ve got your dragon movie, “Eragon,” and the best seller it was based on. There’s the dragon bible, “Dragonology,” now sitting on the shelf of every tween once keener on T. Rex. And “Harry Potter” didn’t hurt.

Two dragon cartoons are duking it out on TV, there are a couple of dragon porn sites (don’t ask), and now comes crowning proof of dragon ascendancy. This Saturday, the fiercely dino-centric American Museum of Natural History unveils its latest blockbuster: “Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids.”

It’s like The Grand Ole Opry staging a tribute to Black Sabbath.

Clearly, the museum got the message, “Dragons rule,” which is why a 19-foot one greets you in all it’s green, glaring glory when you step into the exhibit.

The president of the museum, Ellen Futter, said yesterday that she was proud to present this lifesize model.

Then she paused and added, uh, not that anyone is exactly sure “how big a life-size dragon would be.”

This is not just because dragons don’t exist. It’s also because stories of them *do* exist, on three separate continents, and these different myths extol different dragon traits.

As one learns from the Natural History exhibit, the Asian dragon is a good guy. He makes clouds that bring rain, he controls the seasons and the rivers, and he’s brilliant. Size-wise, however, “He can be smaller than small, bigger than big, higher than high, and lower than low.” Or at least so said a Chinese scholar around the year 1100 C.E., Lu Dian (who, like the wisest of all scholars, hedged his bets).

Categorizing dragons seems to have been a cottage industry for scholars throughout the ages, for also on display is an illustrated encyclopedia of snakes, lizards, and dragons. This was written in 1640 by an Italian professor who apparently believed that dragons were just another slimy species.

Governments believed in dragons, too. There are British dragon coins from 600-800 C.E., Turkish dragon cash from a couple hundred years later, and a commemorative dragon medal minted in Russia in 1709.

The dragons on them are the European kind making their big comeback today: evil fire-breathers who walked on two legs or four, flew — or not — and spent their time burning down villages, eating children, and keeping maidens (often royal) captive. Hey, it’s a living.

It’s also marketing gold.

“Dragons are the low-hanging fruit of mythology,” the author of Punk Marketing, Richard Laermer, said. The public totally gets them, but they’re not sick of them yet. “In the ’90s there were, like, 30 dinosaur movies,” Laermer said. Paleo pets wore out their welcome. Dragons, however, maintain their air of continental cool. If dinosaurs are New World, dragons are Old. If dinosaurs depend on science to tell their stories, dragons depend on wizards and scrolls. They’re magical.

So what are they doing in a science museum?

To make absolutely sure no one assumes the institution is succumbing to anything less than academic rigor, the exhibit explains (one might say harps on) on the fact that myths are important, even to scientists, because they show how humans struggle to understand natural history.

Yes. And the reason HBO airs “Strippers: The Naked Stages” is because it’s sociologically enlightening.

No matter what the motive, Mythical Creatures is a thrilling show. So thrilling that it is sure to inspire a frenzy of purchases from its well-stocked gift shop: Dragon puzzles, stickers, books, and stuffed animals.

This means, of course, that dragons will eventually go the way of dinosaurs: sooner or later to be killed off by cuteness.

In the meantime, though, they’re on fire.

lskenazy@yahoo.com