Dragon bones are associated with the Prayer skill, and are dropped by all adult dragons. Dragon bones give 72 Prayer experience when buried (60 experience on Run escape Classic), 288 Prayer experience when offered at the Ectofuntus, or 252 Prayer experience when offered at gilded altar with 2 burners lit. The ease of collecting Dragon Bones and the benefits taken from them means they are a cost effective way of being taught in prayer. Free players can only obtain and use dragon bones, by killing Frost Dragons, Green dragons and Iron dragons in the Daemonheim dungeons. They cannot buy or sell or obtain any of these bones outside the dungeons. Members can also get Dragon Bones as a reward from the Soul Wars activities by selecting the 'Gamble' option when choosing rewards. If a player gets Dragon Bones, they will likely be in multiples of 11.

There are a wide range of Dragons that drop bones, including Green dragons, Blue dragons, Red dragons, Black dragons, Bronze dragons, Iron dragons, Steel dragons, Mikhail dragons, Brutal green dragons, and the King black dragon. Most dragons are strong opponents. However, Green dragons and Blue dragons are the weakest types of dragons, and dragon bones are mostly accumulated by killing them.

Green dragons are the lowest level dragons in the game. They can be found in various places in the wilderness as well as in two locations in the Chaos tunnels. Green dragons in the Chaos Tunnels are grouped together with Baby black dragons, while players may be attacked by Revenants while fighting Green Dragons in the wilderness locations. The high value of dragons' drops (bones plus hides every kill for chromatic dragons) that makes dragon-hunting a highly profitable combat activity.

Players can make 300k to 800k coins per hour fighting Green dragons, depending on how fast they can kill the dragons and bank the bones and hides. About 125-150k can be made per run on dragons, and more if more valuable items are brought back as well.? Baby dragons do not drop dragon bones. Instead, they drop Baby dragon bones. Burying dragon bones is not recommended; usually they are best used on a gilded altar.

The discovery of the oracle bones in China goes back to 1899, when a scholar from Peking was prescribed a remedy containing "dragon bones" for his illness: "dragon bones" were widely used in Chinese medicine and usually refer to fossils of dead animals. The scholar noticed some carvings that looked like some kind of writing on the bones he acquired from the local pharmacy. This lucky find led eventually to the discovery of Anyang, the last capital of Shang dynasty where archeologists have found an enormous amount of these carved bones. The inscriptions on these bones tell us that by 1200 BC Chinese writing was already a highly developed writing system which was used to record a language fairly similar to classical Chinese.

Such a complex and sophisticated script certainly has a history but so far we found no traces of its predecessors. The oracle bone inscriptions received their name after their content which is invariably related to divination. The ancient Chinese diviners used these bones as records of their activity, providing us with a detailed description of the topics that interested the Shang kings. Most of these divinations refer to hunting, warfare, weather, selection of auspicious days for ceremonies, etc.

Bronze Inscriptions the next stage in the history of Chinese writing is the bronze inscriptions (jinwen). These are texts either casted into bronze vessels or carved into the surface of an already carved vessel. These vessels became widely used during the Eastern Zhou dynasty (1150-771 BC) but there are examples from late Shang as well. Since the inscriptions are located on ritual vessels which were used for performing sacrifices, their content usually refers to ritual ceremonies, commemorations etc. Although most of these writings consist of only a few characters, there are some which contain quite lengthy descriptions. The language and calligraphic style at this stage is similar to that found on the oracle bones.

Starting from about the fifth century BC, we begin to find examples of writings on bamboo strips. Before writing the characters with a hard brush or a stick on the bamboo surface, the strips were prepared in advance and tied together with strings to form a roll. The new media also means new content: along with historical and administrative writings, the bamboo strips contains the earliest manuscripts of famous Chinese philosophical texts, such as the Laozi, Liji, and Lunyu.

Beside bamboo, texts were also written on wooden tablets and silk cloth. The written language by this time is the so-called "classical Chinese" which had remained more or less the same as late as the 19th century.

? A major event in the history of Chinese script is the standardization of writing by the First Emperor of Qin who unified China in 221 BC. Before that time, each of the many states in China had their own style and peculiarities which meant that, although mutually comprehensible, the scripts had many deviations. The First Emperor introduced the Qin script as the official writing and from there on all the unified states had to use it in their affairs. The calligraphic style of this period is the "clerical script" or lishu which is easily readable today even to the uninitiated.
Dragon bones were worth only 1800 coins each in December 2008, but a combination of inflation, the release of the Ancient Curses, and higher demand in general has brought dragon bones to their current price of about 5,500 coins each. As of June 11th they have raised to about 5,900 coins, and the price continues to rise. In 2007, the price of dragon bones went as low as 1000 each due to the huge supply from the real world traders. The earliest examples of Chinese writing date to the late Shang period (ca. 1200 BC). These are the so-called Oracle Bone Inscriptions (jiaguwen) which were found at the site of the last Shang capital near present-day Anyang, Henan province.