There is a universal truth in the world of horror films: if you make something once on a low budget and it turns out more successful than you’d originally expected, then you have no choice but to rush a sequel out in time for the following Halloween in the hopes of it becoming a cult classic.
Last year I wrote a listicle where I compared figures from horror films to their palaeontological equivalents. And it turned into one of the most read blog posts I’ve ever uploaded on the site. So naturally, a sequel was green-lit.
Thus, I once again set aside the idea of having a social life in October in favour of sitting alone at home, binge watching horror films in the name of research to come up with more comparisons. And, in the true nature of horror sequels, the resulting product is worse than the original. Enjoy.
The Xenomorph (Alien, 1979)
The eponymous Alien of the classic film is one of the most iconic movie monsters of all time. H.R. Geiger’s bizarre design made the term Xenomorph a household name, or it would have if anyone could hear you say it in space.
If you search exhaustively through the fossil record for the word ‘alien’, you come up with an intriguing collection of results (and maybe get put on the CIA watchlist). One you will find is a dinosaur which, when first hearing the word, seems to be a perfect prehistoric pop culture match; Xenoceratops.
But Xenoceratops is really alike in name only. None of its actual morphological features closely match those of the actual Xenomorph. No claws, no acid for blood, no lil guy inside its big mouth. It’s a cool creature for sure (who doesn’t love a ceratopsian dinosaur?), but terror of the Nostromo it is not.
Slightly underwhelmingly, the name actually comes from it being an unexpected find in the Foremost Formation, and not from it predating deep space mining crews or being the subject of an upsetting obsession across generations of Hyberdyne Systems androids.
But the Xenomorph is a classic, arguably in the top ten ever movie monsters. It deserves more than a cop-out name matching, we need to pair it with something that actually matches the character traits of the perfect organism.
To do that, we’d need to find an animal prevalent in the fossil record, which starts off as an egg, goes through a distinct larval stage, before malting into an alarmingly phallic adult form with vicious sharp teeth it can extrude from its mou… oh my god it’s a priapulid.
The priapulids, also known as Penis Worms, have existed on this planet (in one form or another) since the Cambrian period, 500 million years ago, and still exist today. So whilst they may not be the first fossils we think of when discussing palaeontology, you can’t deny they are out there in force.
As the name suggests, Penis Worms are pretty phallic in overall shape. They hatch from eggs, and grow through a larval stage known as a lorica.
Priapulids feed by extruding out a structure known as an introvert from their front. This is lined with spikey teeth called scalids (which are the most commonly discovered priapulid fossils). It’s not exact, but I think it’s about as close to having an extendable mouth within your mouth that we’re gonna get.
Admittedly, one trait not shared between xenomorph and priapulid is parasitism. I may be wrong, and please, worm aficionados feel free to correct me if I am, but I can’t seem to find any priapulids which are also parasitic. So that means we never have to worry about having one hug onto our head and burst out of our chests a few hours later, which, truthfully, I’m okay with.
If you did want to have an idea of what it might look like if a priapulid were to evolve to take on the traits of a facehugger, please feel free to watch the most jarring scene in 2005’s King Kong. You know the one I mean.
Zuul – The Gatekeeper (Ghostbusters, 1984)
Now, I’ve literally just said that we couldn’t make a match on name similarities alone, but I’m going to immediately contradict myself when thinking about a pairing for the Gatekeeper of Gozer the Gozerian, because there is literally a dinosaur named Zuul.
Zuul was an ankylosaurid from the Late Cretaceous of Montana, and named in 2017 in honour of the devil dog of Ghostbusters fame, due to their heads being passably similar in shape. Albeit one of them has decidedly more carnivorous-looking teeth. We don’t know whether Zuul the dinosaur would have had glowing red eyes or a backlit mouth when roaring so we can’t take that away from it.
At an estimated 6m in length, Zuul the dinosaur is actually bigger than its demonic counterpart. The dinosaur shows all the classic ankylosaur features too, such as the body armour, and heavy duty tail club, which the demon is lacking. Honestly I think this is one case where the real animal would probably have beaten the fictional one in a fair fight.
It’s estimated that some ankylosaurs could swing their tails with over 4000 N/s of force. That’s more than enough to turn your internal organs into a soft mass of plasma-melted marshmallow.
They could have used this defensively to take out their potential predators at the leg if they came too close. And the reason I say that part of the body specifically is because this inspired the other section of the dinosaur’s name; Zuul crurivastator, literally meaning “Zuul destroyer of shins”.
When faced with weaponry like that I suppose an opponent squaring up to them would have little hope but intimidation. In other words, if Zuul were to ask if you are a god, you say yes.
Also, for the record I can find no species in nature, living or dead, named after the character played by Sigourney Weaver in her human form from the film Ghostbusters. In other words, there is no Dana, only Zuul.
Queen Anaconda (Anaconda, 1997)
Okay so off the bat I’m clearly cheating and taking the easy way out here. This film is literally called Anaconda. And Anacondas exist. But do they exist like the one in the film?
The film makes several bold claims about the famed snakes. It claims they “regurgitate food to enjoy it again later”, can crush a jaguar so tightly that its eye explode out of its head, tactically break the necks of their prey like they’re John Wick, digest bones to dust, and can break through the floorboards of a wooden shack if its separating them from Danny Trejo. But can the real thing do any of that stuff?
In short; no, kind of, no, no, and no. I say ‘kind of’ for the second one because Green Anacondas have in fact been known to kill and eat jaguars, albeit extremely rarely.
What about size? The larger of the two adult anacondas shown in the film is 40ft in length, which is far larger than the real thing. The largest recorded living anaconda was actually found (and sadly also died) earlier this year in south Brazil, an individual named Ana Julia which was 26ft from head to tail tip.
Incredibly though, there is one snake from prehistory that could grow to the lengths seen in the film. Titanoboa from the Eocene (60 mya) of Colombia, is estimated to have reached 42ft, and has been a fan favourite of palaeo-keen kids since its discovery twenty years ago.
Much like anaconda, Titanoboa probably would have supported its massive weight with a largely aquatic lifestyle, swimming around the tropical riversides and eating fish (and potentially crocodiles). It probably would have had quite a laid-back lifestyle, and is unlikely to have scaled cliffs in order to dramatically burst through waterfalls.
The Giant Crocodile (Lake Placid, 1999)
I began this film looking again for an easy entry for this article. A film where the monster is just a big crocodile? Ideal. What I didn’t expect was that the main character is very prominently a palaeontologist from the American Museum of Natural History. And that brought whole new realms of awful to the experience.
But we aren’t here to talk about the palaeontologist, or why they were sent on this mission (a question repeated often by an extraordinarily correct-to-do-so Brendan Gleeson throughout the film). We are here to talk about the monster. What exactly is this crocodile? Could it exist today, or is there a palaeo representative that’s more fitting?
The crocodile in the film is shown as being 30ft long, capable of biting a man clean in half, and pulling down a helicopter. They even drop a species name; the Indo-Pacific Crocodile.
Indo-Pacific Crocodile is actually just a different way of saying Saltwater Crocodile. It’s a much more familiar term they ignored likely to avoid saying that their Salty was in the fresh water of Black Lake, Maine (yeah that’s right, the film Lake Placid genuinely isn’t even set in Lake Placid). Though this is a non-issue seeing as they can live in fresh water just fine.
Size-wise we’re about a third short, as the largest ever known Saltwater Crocodile (an individual from the Phillipines named Lolong), measured up at a little over 20ft.
But in the past, we do have crocodile relatives not only at the 30ft mark, but surpassing it. Take Deinosuchus, an alligator-like crocodilian from the Cretaceous of North America, which could measure 35ft, and weigh over two tonnes. This was a creature that could, and would, have taken dinosaurs which strayed too close to the water.
It wasn’t alone either, as others reached similar sizes too, like Sarcosuchus. This African reptile also lived during the Cretaceous, though, despite looking superficially similar, it was not a true crocodile like those we see today, and belonged to a related group known fittingly as the pseudosuchians.
When it comes to comparing the behaviours of the animals, I must give Lake Placid a small amount of credit. Here there is at least an attempt to show the crocodile being like an animal, and not purely a movie monster. It doesn’t hunt when it can’t be bothered to, and spends most of the film just kinda hanging out, minding its own business.
Compare this to Anaconda, where the snake is all crazy, all the time; going so far as to have the snake continue pursuit of prey whilst literally being on fire.
I’ll give the film one more bit of credit too; Betty White. If you’ve seen it, you’ll understand.
I’m ending this article with compliments to this film because I’ve got to give it something to feel happy about. It can’t be easy being Lake Placid. I mean, you ask anyone to name their favourite ‘American film from the 90s that features a palaeontologist main character in a remote location, defending themselves from giant reptiles made by Stan Winston’, and somehow Lake Placid doesn’t even manage to be in the top two films fitting that criteria.
About The Author
Rhys Charles has been the head of the Bristol Dinosaur Project since November 2016. He continually hijacks this blog site to write dumb but educational articles. You can find info on his recent publications here.