By MICHAEL D. WINKLE

(Author's note: Several years ago, when Forrest J. Ackerman and Ray Ferry revived Famous Monsters Of Filmland, I was hot to contribute something to the magazine that made up 75% of my childhood. I wrote this article as "Mesozoic Misrepresentations" and sent it in--and it was promptly ignored. I did not know about the internal struggle at FM, nor was I aware that Ackerman resigned as editor (Ferry continued using the name "Dr. Acula" to draw in the magazine-buying baby-boomers). Anyway, "Mesozoic" was meant to be a pastiche of Ackerman's breathless, alliterative, punny style, which I'm sure will be familiar to most readers of HORROR-WOOD.)

No Bronto, Tonto?

"There is no such thing as a Brontosaurus!"

What is this, the cry of a Creationist, to whom geologic eras older than the 6,000 years calculated by Bishop Ussher in the 17th century are a no-no? Oh, no--it's modern-day paleontologists, excavators of the prehistoric past, who are stealing the thunder of the Thunder Lizard!

What, then, tromped across and destroyed London Bridge at the climax of the original The Lost World (1925)? A Hindenburg-sized hallucination? What overturned the raft in King Kong and chased one unfortunate sailor from the Venture up a moss-draped tree? Was it swamp gas that plucked loose and slew one of Carl Denham's men?

An explanation is in order: It seems that, for the better part of a century, the skeletal remains of Brontosauri displayed in museums across the world have been assembled with the wrong head at the end of that school bus-long neck!.

The "new" dinosaur, with the correct head on the former Bronto's body, is known as Apatosaurus. The name "Brontosaurus" has been put out to prehistoric pasture. In a manner of speaking, the "Brontosaurus" of books, films, plastic models and comics never existed!

This is not the only dino to gain a new name, either: the famous Trachodon, most basic of the duck-billed dinosaurs, is now called Anatosaurus. The Allosaurus, dreaded killer of the Jurassic Age (as well as Ray Harryhausen's The Valley Of Gwangi and One Million Years B.C.) is now Antrodemus.

The Tyrannosaur relative Gorgosaurus (no relation to the British Gorgo) has been re-dubbed Albertosaurus. Other prehistoric creatures may be re-christened in the future, probably to something beginning with "A".

No one can accuse imagi-movies of being sticklers for fact where it concerns paleontology. Cavemen have cavorted with dinosaurs since silent films like The Dinosaur And The Missing Link (1917). Iguanas have masqueraded as dinos more often than one can list.

And if actual creatures in the fossil record were not exciting enough, movie makers of the past were quick to invent their own prehistoric perils: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, The Deadly Mantis, The Monster That Challenged The World, Creature From The Black Lagoon, Godzilla, and Rodan, to name but a few.

One fictitious dinosaur has taken on a life of its own, however, having been presented for decades as an actual specimen of Mesozoic monster.

In the 1870’s, pioneer paleontologists Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh were fanatic rivals. Each tried to out-do the other in the number of new specimens found, and occasionally they announced "discoveries" that were dubious at best.

Cope described (erroneously) a new genus of ceratopsian (horned dinosaur) from a few fragments of bone. He christened it Agathaumas sylvestris. Dinosaur illustrator extraordinaire Charles R. Knight painted a striking portrait of the non-existent beast, making it resemble a cross between the three-horned Triceratops and the spike-frilled Styracosaurus.

Stop-motion wizard Willis O'Brien came across the Knight painting while researching dinosaurs, and he promptly featured an Agathaumas in The Lost World, as well as in his never-finished film, Creation. Later, his protégé, Ray Harryhausen, discovered the mythical beast independently and built his own model for Evolution (1938). The Agathaumas has been popping up ever since in books on prehistoric life, and it even rated its own bubble-gum card in the Sixties. See Donald F. Glut's The Dinosaur Scrapbook (1980) for the full story.

Sometimes Nature imitates Art. (Art who? Carney? Garfunkel?) Look at Michael (Andromeda Strain, Westworld) Crichton and Steven (Jaws, E.T., etc.) Spielberg's dino blockbuster, Jurassic Park. Spielberg made the vicious Velociraptors twice the size of their real-life counterparts to increase their already monumental menace, but, even as the movie was being filmed, a new dromaeosaur (the family to which the raptors belong) was discovered in Utah.

Called logically, if unimaginably, Utahraptor, it reached a length of twenty feet, and it shared the peculiar (and deadly) sickle-claws of its flesh-eating cousins--Utah's curved blades being a good twelve inches long. It was easily the match of the movie raptors--and possibly any other land-dwelling creature, ancient or modern.

Scientists will tell you that fossilization is an uncommon process, and no paleontologist would suggest that all species that ever lived on this earth have been discovered. Someday some intrepid bone-hunter may uncover the remains of a genuine Rhedosaurus, or a fin-backed doppelganger of Godzilla, King Of The Monsters. Who can say?