Nano-dinosaurs: why King Kong's dinosaurs were the wrong size

One additional question about Skull Island dinosaurs is why they did not suffer the size reduction typical of originally large animals when they colonize small islands, where food and other resources are scarce, as asked by Silverberg (in Haber, 2005). 

Does this biological rule apply to dinosaurs? It does, and even though proof was ignored by the paleontological community it  was actually found long ago by the tragic Baron Franz Nopcsa in Hateg, a place where dinosaurs could weigh only an eighth of their mainland relatives weight. 

Baron Franz Nopcs, circa 1913. Source: wikipedia.org

To be absent from early twentieth century charts, Skull Island should have been much smaller than Hateg with its 78 000 km² (see Benton et al. 2010) and large dinosaurs there would have needed to be much smaller.

Even if we imagine that the island in the 1933 film appears tiny because it is not to scale, viable populations of animals as large as dinosaurs require far larger landmasses: in brief, science does not support the gigantic fauna of Skull Island (or in A. Conan Doyle’s Lost World plateau that inspired it).

Source: https://burrunjor.com/page/7/

Did dinosaurs really scratch?

I love one aspect of the predatory dinosaur that I have not seen mentioned in the literature: before the fight, you see him scratching (or her? Females might have been larger and more fit to fight Kong). This scratching is a genial idea from the animators and forced me to ask if dinosaurs could scratch. Impossible to know? Actually not, and here I got my answer from famous ethologist and Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz: scratching with a limb is a useful stereotyped behavior that appeared in our evolutionary time long before dinosaurs, with the first amphibians (Lorenz & Leyhausen, 1971). Why was it scratching? Perhaps because of the mosquitoes that I mentioned earlier?

Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989). Source: http://www.dabase.org/lorenz.htm

Birds in the Sumatra region are nearly three times as diverse as reptiles, so there probably were many species on Skull Island, but even though we listen to them we only get to see a few types:  some flying around when they reach the island, one that flies scared from a nest when Kong is about to place Ann on it (I could not identify this bird) and the vultures that fly above and feed on the Tyrannosaurus carcass.

Vultures flying above. Source: http://kingkong.wikia.com

I have a question for next week: why the dinosaurs did not suffer the size reduction typical of originally large animals when they colonize small islands?

Wrong for a century: King Kong never fought a T Rex!

The most memorable dinosaur from King Kong may be the Tyrannosaurus that he wrestles. The reptile was also correct according to the knowledge available at the time, with scales instead of feathers. According to audio commentary by Ray Harryhausen in the DVD edition of the film, it was not a Tyrannosaurus but an Allosaurus, but I will keep calling it Tyrannosaurus because the model was not anatomically detailed and because a Tyrannosaurus is what most people think they are watching.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

There is also a scene in which a pterosaur captures Ann but has difficulties taking flight with its heavy load, actually an impossible task for such an animal (the same error appears in 2015’s Jurassic World). If you pay attention you will notice that even though scientifically wrong, the scene recorded the beauty of Fay Wray’s legs for history.

Source: http://greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot.com/

I can imagine the plesiosaurs (from 66 million years before present, mybp) swimming to the island and the pterosaurs (from 80 mybp) reaching it on the wing, but the question of how the dinosaurs could have reached the island if this were a true story forced me to check the paleomaps for the Cretaceous and Jurassic periods. The Stegosaurus and Brontosaurus lived up to 150 mybp in the northern landmass of the time, so theoretically they could have walked to the area, but the Tyrannosaurus lived on a giant North American island 66 mybp so I see no feasible way for the carnivore to reach Skull Island, despite the land connections imagined by Valdron (2005). If you take Harryhausen’s statement that it was meant to be an Allosaurus, the problem disappears and its arrival is believable.

Source: http://bumbletubclub.blogspot.com/