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/