Phoenix
Reference: Phoenix (mythology)
Anatomically legal. The phoenix is a bird, built on a bird’s plan, with a bird’s limb count. What is extraordinary about it is not its body.
Scored on every axis
Passing the test
Two legs, two wings, feathers, lungs. The phoenix violates nothing on any axis in this section. Set beside the griffin — assembled from two real animals into an impossible one — the phoenix is a real body plan with an extraordinary life cycle attached: combustion and renewal, rather than added limbs.
That distinction is the useful one. These axes test construction, not plausibility. A creature can be anatomically unexceptional and still make a claim no biology supports, and the phoenix is exactly that case. The catalogue records that it passes here, and does not thereby suggest it is any better attested than the dragon.