In the 1933 movie King Kong, Skull Island was populated
by dinosaurs from a large time span (Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, Tyrannosaurus),
an unidentified iguana-like reptile, a plesiosaur −often mistaken for a snake−,
a pterosaur and birds.
Some herbivores like the gorilla and the Stegosaurus
appear to behave incorrectly by eating meat (i.e. humans) but a closer
look will show that they use their teeth to kill the victims but do not actually
swallow them. This shows knowledge and care by the animators.
The plesiosaur belonged to a marine group that could
swim to any distant landmass, the only question about how it got to the island
is how it reached the pond near the volcano. The script only calls for “a
monster” (Dohm, 2007) so it was the film staff that chose a marine reptile.
They probably were unaware of the problems that freshwater brings for marine animals (as cleverly mentioned by Silverberg in Haber, 2005), but you can also defend their choice by suggesting that perhaps not all plesiosaurs were marine, or that the water in the mountain top is just the remaining of a marine ecosystem lifted by tectonic activity. In any case, the plesiosaur defends itself from Kong by constricting its neck around him, like a snake, something we now know that was not possible, but fully in agreement with paleo-illustrator Charles R. Knight’s reconstruction at the time (Everhart, 2002).
Source: californiaherps.com
They probably were unaware of the problems that freshwater brings for marine animals (as cleverly mentioned by Silverberg in Haber, 2005), but you can also defend their choice by suggesting that perhaps not all plesiosaurs were marine, or that the water in the mountain top is just the remaining of a marine ecosystem lifted by tectonic activity. In any case, the plesiosaur defends itself from Kong by constricting its neck around him, like a snake, something we now know that was not possible, but fully in agreement with paleo-illustrator Charles R. Knight’s reconstruction at the time (Everhart, 2002).
Source: californiaherps.com
It's a plesiosaur, not a snake!
This old reconstruction also shows plesiosaurs with very flexible necks:
Hawkins (1840). Source: Wikipedia.
A newer version reflects the more complete fossil record we now have, but still the neck, seen in isolation, resembles a snake:
Plesiosaur reconstruction by Adam S. Smith, 2002. Source: Wikipedia.
The Brontosaurus (or Apatosaurus, see Choi, 2015) in the movie drags its tail, and this was correct according to scientific knowledge at the time. But it also walks well on land, which was believed impossible at the time: the artistic need for a chase forced the artists to ignore the belief of early paleontologists, and predated current reconstructions of large herbivorous dinosaurs, which could advance at good speed on land (Haber, 2005).
The Brontosaurus about to kill a poor man with its jaws, not "about to eat him":
Source: 21essays.blogspot.com
In our next post, we will continue to see what was right and wrong in King Kong's 1933 dinosaurs.
Kong also met this nice stegosaur, a dinosaur that I have loved since childhood because of its spectacular set of back plates.
Source: donglutsdinosaurs.com
Hawkins (1840). Source: Wikipedia.
A newer version reflects the more complete fossil record we now have, but still the neck, seen in isolation, resembles a snake:
Plesiosaur reconstruction by Adam S. Smith, 2002. Source: Wikipedia.
The Brontosaurus (or Apatosaurus, see Choi, 2015) in the movie drags its tail, and this was correct according to scientific knowledge at the time. But it also walks well on land, which was believed impossible at the time: the artistic need for a chase forced the artists to ignore the belief of early paleontologists, and predated current reconstructions of large herbivorous dinosaurs, which could advance at good speed on land (Haber, 2005).
The Brontosaurus about to kill a poor man with its jaws, not "about to eat him":
Source: 21essays.blogspot.com
In our next post, we will continue to see what was right and wrong in King Kong's 1933 dinosaurs.
Kong also met this nice stegosaur, a dinosaur that I have loved since childhood because of its spectacular set of back plates.
Source: donglutsdinosaurs.com
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