[sauropod@berkeley.edu: The dinosaurs (etc.) of King Kong]

[Mike Taylor <mike@miketaylor.org.uk>]

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From: Matt Wedel <sauropod@berkeley.edu>
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Subject: The dinosaurs (etc.) of King Kong
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Hi Mike,

Would you mind forwarding this to the DML?

Apologies if this is rendundant.

The denizens of Skull Island are described in a new book, _The World of 
Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island_, put together by the Weta 
Workshop and published by Pocket Books (HC, $35 US). I haven't seen the 
movie yet, but as far as I can tell, the book has all of the critters 
from the movie plus a whole lot more.

The book is a fictional field guide, along the lines of _The Wildlife of 
Star Wars_ or Wayne Douglas Barlowe's _Expedition_. It is supposedly 
assembled from the notes of several expeditions that visited Skull 
Island in the late 1930s, before the island tore itself apart and sunk 
beneath the waves in some kind of geologic upheaval around the time of 
World War II.

Most of the beasts in the book are not supposed to be the same taxa 
known from the Mesozoic, but rather their little-changed descendants. 
For example, the tyrannosaurs are not _T. rex_ but rather _V. rex_ (for 
_Vastatosaurus_), and the smaller theropods that stampede the sauropods 
are featherless dromaeosaurs, _Venatosaurus saevidicus_. The sauropods 
are listed as _Brontosaurus baxteri_, so it's possible that the book is 
supposed to be from the early postwar years (before the synonymization 
with _Apatosaurus_ became mainstream). The ceratopsian is _Ferrucutus 
cerastes_, and the hadrosaur _Ligocristus innocens_. The book includes a 
stegosaur, _Atercurisaurus_, that looks like _Stegosaurus_ crossed with 
_Kentrosaurus_ with a few gratuitous spikes thrown in, but I don't know 
if its in the movie or not. The armored critter from the movie could be 
_Calcarisaurus_, which might be either an ankylosaur on crack or 
literal, moloch-like lizard (the book isn't clear on its ancestry), or 
_Foetodon_, a blunt-nosed semi-terrestrial croc.

The book, at least, isn't limited to non-avian dinosaurs. Pelycosaurs, 
cynodonts, rauischians, pterosaurs, phorusrhacids (the awesomely named 
_Zeropteryx_), moa-like ratites, _Diplocaulus_-like amphibs, and even a 
species of _Panderichthys_ have survived on Skull Island. Selection for 
flight seems to have gone through a few reversals. :-) Powered or 
semi-powered flight has evolved in cynodonts, rodents, and one species 
of frog (!), and some species of pterosaurs and birds have become 
flightless. Different species of lizard glide on expanded ribs, 
limb-supported skin membranes, or elongated scales. There is an 
impressive diversity of giant arthropods, including spiders, centipedes, 
crustaceans, and more than a few things that defy categorization.

As you might have guessed from the above, genus and species names are 
listed for almost all of the critters--155 fictional Linnean binomials 
by my rough count, almost all with English translations. Another dozen 
or so animals are listed only by common names. Here's a question--what's 
the ICZN status of these fictional genus names? If someone wanted to 
apply one to a real animal, would that be kosher?

The endpapers include a big fold-out that shows about 50 of the Skull 
Island critters with 1930s vehicles and buildings for scale.

I suspect that the reason the filmmakers went with fictional dinos (_V. 
rex_ rather than _T. rex_) is so they could escape the tyranny of 
factual accuracy and present dinos that would have felt at home in the 
1930s, like tyrannosaurs with big butts, armor, and 3-fingered hands 
(the book explains that _V. rex_ has re-evolved that third finger, and 
uses its forearms to pin carcasses to its chest so they can be dragged 
around). If they'd wanted realistic dinosaurs, like those in JP, I'm 
sure they could have delivered. But it seems kinda silly to agonize over 
ultrarealistic dinosaurs in a movie that climaxes with a 25-foot ape 
fighting biplanes on top of the Empire State Building. I'm grooving on 
the retro dinosaurs, and I'm relieved that the "oh but that one little 
detail wasn't quite right" critics are sabotaged before they begin.

Incidentally, you can see (and buy) model skulls of the tyrannosaur, 
dromaeosaur, and ceratopsian here: 
http://www.darkhorse.com/products/index.php. Browse Products by titles, 
and look for Weta Kong entries.

All the best,

Matt

- -- 
Mathew J. Wedel
University of California
Museum of Paleontology
1101 Valley Life Science Bldg.
Berkeley, CA 94720-4780
lab: (510) 642-1730
fax: (510) 642-1822
"I found that the more seriously you take writing,
the more enjoyable it is. I get quite upset when 
people moan about what a hard life it is being a 
writer.... My attitude is, if you hate it so much,
sod off and do something else!
- --Alistair Reynolds, interview in Interzone
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