My Little Pony XXXV: The Thread Everypony Should Know

[Pokonic]

Symbiotic nanobot cultures? That's sort of how the Mii'Ari race works in my setting, although in their case the symbiotes were artificially introduced. (Well, that's the general consensus, anyway)

Huh, thats...pretty plausable. Those thousand-year naps? All that smoke is exess organic and inorganic substances that are deadly in large amounts, so a dragon spends a few years purging stuff, such as mercury, in the form of a filthy black haze

propose, that perhaps the crystals are formed in a way much similar to fossilization in our world, that is, dead animals from the past. Except this time, various proteins and other nutrients are preserved within the crystals as they are formed. Perhaps there is a type of bacteria or other small life form which eats things such as stone and rotting corpses and produces crystal minerals as a waste product, keep in mind that Spike said he had been "growing" his heart-gem in his growth-spurt episode. By eating the gemstones, Dragons are also eating the waste of the microscopic creatures, and quite possibly thousands of the creatures themselves (Keep in mind crystals are found deep within stone, perhaps these microbes crawl into small cracks or pockets of stone and being eating the stone itself, leaving crystal-waste behind in the pocket they leave, and as time passes, they reproduce in the thousands, spreading to other small pockets and producing even more gemstones, all while being sealed off from the outside would by the passing creating even more stone via volcanic activity and such.) These microbes provide protein for the dragons to devour, the microbes themselves having produced it using only the base elements they find within the stone they eat, different stone eaten by the microbes produces different gems, and dragons must eat various different gems to provide a balanced diet. (One gem for protein, another for calcium for example.)

Could be that magical creatures actualy promote the growth of gems in the earth, albet in very small amounts. Hence, that gem is growing simply by being near such a large amount of ambient magical energy, AKA Twilight Sparkle. Dragons can prossess raw magic, and as such can live on gems alown. Some gems are formed in specalised conditions, like, say, a nature-based spell can influence the growth of emeralds over a few centruys. Natuarly, with the combonation of a super-powerful being ruling the area for years, along with ponies and the mere existance of the Everfree, equestria is the gem capital of the world.