What Kind of Animal Is Godzilla?

never garnered any sequels, Godzilla forged on. The Kaiju made his cinematic debut in nineteen fifty four, and since then he starred in more than thirty films spanning six and a half decades, with his newest debuting in March of The character's origin story keeps getting rewritten. He's usually said to be an irradiated beast of prehistoric origins, but the specifics vary from movie to movie. One thing that's remained consistent, however,

is Godzilla's physical toughness. On screen, the Behemoth is practically invincible, But have you ever wondered how or if a beast with Godzilla's dimensions would function in real life? And what

kind of animal would Godzilla be? Anyway? Before the article this episode is based on How Stuff Works, spoke with Kenneth Carpenter, now a retired paleontologist who was director of the Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum when how Stuff Works spoke with him via email in and he took a stab at that second question in essay that he wrote for the official Godzilla compendium. Traditionally, the monster has been identified as a therapod dinosaur. All carnivorous dinos like,

for example, Tyrannosaurus rex are classified as therapods sore birds. Now, Godzilla's skull looks short and blunt for a theopod. He also tends to be depicted with four fingers per hand, and he's got multiple rows of bony vertically oriented plates running down his back and tail. Using these features, Carpenter

tentatively assigned Godzilla to Saratosauria, a primitive theropods subgroup. A few Saradasaurians had backs like Godzilla's studied with osteoderms, that is, bony deposits embedded in the skin, and certain species had shortened skulls to boot. And there was another key feature that helped the Saratosaurians stand out. A Carpenter explained that while some therapods had three, two or even one fingered, four limbs. The more primitive subgroups, like the Saratosaurians, had

four or more digits per hand. Hostaff Works also spoke by email with Victoria Arbor, an armored dinosaur expert who's the curator of Paleontology at the Royal British Columbia Museum. In blog post, Arbor made the case that the King of the Monsters might not be a dinosaur at all. Maybe he's got more in common with crocodiles. Crocs, alligators and their prehistoric kin form a reptilian clade called the

studists suchian. Arbor noted that osteoderms and four fingered hands are more commonly seen in pseudosoukians than they are in theory pods, so perhaps Godzilla belongs to the former group. Speaking of digits, let's check out Godzilla's feet. In most of the original Japanese movies, the big guy has a plant a grade stance that means he walks flat on his feet like humans. Conversely, digitigrade animals such as dogs will walk on their toes while keeping their heels off

the ground. No known dinosaur, theopod or otherwise was similarly flat footed, Barbora said, living crocodilomorphs are PLANTI grade, but the jury is still out on whether or not all pseudosuchians were plant A grade, especially those that were bipeedle. However, for the American made movie Godzilla's feet underwent a dramatic redesign.

Barbora said, I think you could make the argument that Godzilla has hortiselike feet, and many tortoises are also digital grade in a manner similar to elephants, with a large heel pad supporting upright toes. She also pointed out that while quote almost all bipedal dinosaurs only had three weight bearing digits per foot, this version of Godzilla keeps quote at least four toes on the ground. Truly huge land animals such as the long necked dinosaurs, have column shaped

digital grade feet. Those limbs are really efficient. It's supporting massive body weights, and so if Godzilla was a real creature, would probably expect him to have Digital grade hind limbs, even though study claimed plant to grade animals can swing their arms more forcefully in combat, and Godzilla sure loves combat. But it's doubtful that Godzilla could physically walk on dry land no matter what his feet looked like Hastaff Works,

also spoke via email with paleontologist Donald Anderson. He said getting Godzilla to stand upright and still would be a complete nonstarter. Its bones would not be able to support its body weight, and its heart would be unable to pump blood to the head. This is mostly due to what's called the square cube law. But when you scale an object up, its mass increases more sharply than its surface area. Double the height, weight and length of a wooden cube, and you'll also have made the thing eight

times heavier than it was before. But how would Godzilla fare underwater? Henderson works at Canada's Royal Terrell Museum and tackles physics related questions about extinct animals. In he used computer modeling to test the hypothesis that Spinosaurus, a therapod with a large sail on its back, was built for swimming. He found that the deep overall body shape of this fin backed animal would have made the dinosaur prone to tipping over as it swam. So would Godzilla's osteoderms put

him at the same risk. Henderson doesn't think so, by his calculations. The back plates on Stegosaurus Jurassic herbivore who influenced Godzilla's design, only represented sevent of that dinosaurs overall body mass. Meanwhile, Godzilla's plates appear to make up an even smaller fraction of the kaiju's total mass, and so Henderson suspects they wouldn't cause him to tip over during swimming. Still, as a marine animal, Godzilla would face plenty of other problems.

The seagoing creatures tend to be streamlined. With his jagged osteoderms and chunky legs, Godzilla is anything but Therefore, he had need to expend lots of extra energy in order to propel himself through the water. Henderson explained the best option for Godzilla to swim would be to undulate its body and tail to produce waves that travel down the body.

To think of how crocodiles and salamanders swim. When they want to move quickly, they fold their arms and legs close to the body and use sideways motions to push back against the water and get a forward thrust. And by the way, the semi aquatic behavior was and still is widespread among the Pseudosyukians. On the other hand, there's no proof that any non bird therapod was habitually amphibious, and yet some of them did take the occasional dip.

In Utah, there's a series of a hundred ninety million year old tracks made by therapods whose toes barely scraped the ground as they swam along. For his part, Carpenter disagrees with the pseudosuchian identity argument, since therapods could clearly swim. He thinks godzillas see going ways don't preclude the monster from being a bona fide dinosaur. Furthermore, as we've seen the Kaiju does share a lot of traits with the seratosaurians. If he's not a member of that group, then his

ancestors probably evolved all of those features independently. This scenario is certainly plausible's a phenomenon called convergent evolution. But Carpenter thinks the similarities between Godzilla and therapod dinos are probably too numerous to be coincidental. The Carpenter said, we already know that doctor Yamine, a character from the movie, declared the original Godzilla a dinosaur, and since he was on site, I'll take his word. Today's episode is based on the

article is Godzilla a Dinosaur? On how stuff works dot Com written by Mark Mancini. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio and partnership with how stuff works dot Com, and it's produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.