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Foundation Profile: Brontosaurus

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Location  Skull Island

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FILE: BRONTOSAURUS BAXTERI 

name meaning in Latin: BAXTER’S THUNDER LIZARD 

TAXONOMY
Domain: Eukaryota 
Kingdom: Animalia 
Phylum: Chordata 
Subphylum: Vertebrata 
Class: Reptilia 
Superorder: Dinosauria 
Order: Saurischia 
Suborder: Sauropodomorpha 
Family: Diplodocidae 
Subfamily: Apatosaurinae 
Genus: Brontosaurus 
Species: Brontosaurus Baxteri 

Length: on average 90 to 130 feet long( 27.4 to 39.6 meters long) 
Height: in a normal posture 55 feet tall but when reared up on its hind legs capable of being 90 feet tall ( 16.7 meters normally 27.4 meters when reared up) 
Weight: on average 80 to 120 tons ( 72575 to 108862 kilograms) 
Ecological niche: high browsing herding herbivore that serves as the primary feeder of the top levels of skull island’s vegetation as well as the main clearer and maker of the various forest pathways through the jungles for many other animals
Danger level: Almost none as typically their size means they are immune from predation from only a handful of carnivores thus it generally is very tolerant to other herbivores smaller than itself as well and even raising herbivores of other species in its herd depending on the species 
Life Expectancy: 100 to 150 years 
Sexual maturity: 15 to 20 years for both sexes 

“ now when I first was stationed here I was expecting that I wouldn’t really do much…..but when I first ventured and got to see the actual dinosaurs I was genuinely awestruck by these guys…..to tell the truth I don’t think ANY movie or documentary or anything else can really do justice to the sheer SCALE of the brontosaurus and the feeling you get when you see a herd of them in their natural environment. When you see them in person and for the first time you REALLY get to feel just how SMALL life today is compared to hundreds of millions of years ago when giants walked the earth that barring modern whales no other animal can EVER compare to in size ALONE. True there are BIGGER ones that it but the brontosaurus really is the main dinosaur of skull island that emphasizes to any first time visitor just how much of a distinct place skull island is. Here you are not just stepping onto a new land untouched by man, your stepping into a world that once existed LONG before humanity was even a thing a alien one where nothing here is like what we know”- Betty Crawford female field agent interviewed on her first encounter with a brontosaurus Baxteri herd 1995

evee since we hunted the megafauna of the ice age humanity has long held a distinct view and fascination with animals that are in the category of megafauna. The notion that one point in the history of the world there were once things larger than anything we know today has been one that has held in near every major civilization with possibly the most prominent being the idea of a giant race of beings called the titans in Greek mythology. When humanity began to uncover the fossil record of the distant past life was viewed at first to be n bigger than life was today but as more and more was uncovered we began to really see that in earths distant past creatures that at the time of their discovery were viewed as near monstrous in sizes mainly that nothing else was alive today that could compare to the sheer scale of them. 

The notion would come to its head in the late 1800s and early 1900s when the fossils of the largest animals to ever walk the earth were uncovered The sauropods. While every dinosaur group is unique and spectacular in their own way very few can really be able to showcase the sheer spectacular grandeur of the Mesozoic than the massive long necked dinosaurs called the sauropods which initially were believed ,at the time of their discovery, due to their size to be incapable of walking on land from their weight they were mainly aquatic animals before over the decades more evidence showed they were fully terrestrial animals who started off as bipedal animals before they got more bigger and reverted to all 4 limbs for locomotion with their neck expanding to allow them to reach sources of plants other herbivorous dinosaurs couldn't reach to with them originating in the late Triassic before exploding in diversity during the Jurassic with many different families before various climatic shifts and other factors led to only the titanosaurs to remain by the Cretaceous who had managed to spread to every continent including Antarctica. 

Alas like with every golden age it would come to its end as the sauropods along with 75 percent of life on earth would meet its end 65 million years ago via a large asteroid that ended the reign of the dinosaurs. And following their extinction across the world no other land animal has ever come close to reaching the sizes sauropods achieved during the Mesozoic, that is until the discovery of the legendary skull island by the SCP foundation in the 1930s. When it was explored the first field explorers would be in a state of awe as they would see that sauropods still existed upon the landmass with the most common and widespread being the subject of this file, BRONTOSAURUS BAXTERI which was named in honor of one of the first field explorers who encountered it which would be used as a cover for the first King Kong movie as well as the 2005 remake which was changed to being named after a movie star character from the film. 

As for the animal itself visually brontosaurus appears as a stereotypical image of a mainstream sauropod with the iconic long neck and large size with its skin being colored like that of an elephant. Through later samples of the animals dna as well as autopsy on a few bodies which were small enough for us to transport effectively as well as the bone beds of skull island the brontosaurus of skull island is actually the descendant of its namesake from Jurassic North America that being the brontosaurus excelsus with the main difference being that instead of being 70 feet long head to tail like it's ancestor the one on skull island can reach much bigger sizes at 90 to 130 feet and weighs much more as well. 

The reason it has undergone such a dramatic shift in size deals with how it has evolved. Through what we have gathered it is believed that the ancestor of the skull island brontosaurus species arrived along with various other animals of its habitat to skull island during the Jurassic using its natural anomalous properties to form rivers that could allow the landmass into North America with the island on the outside being as small as key west while inside big enough to encompass France and the Low Countries in area before it moved on with its arrived immigrants. Before leaving and any trace of the rivers it used were anomalously erased leaving no evidence for their existence until we managed to come up with the technology to track and record the geologic journey skull island has gone through over its entire history. 

When it arrived the brontosaurus was now in a land which while plentiful in food and space had various challenges and pressures that caused it along with other sauropods who arrived that eventually were replaced by the widespread titanosaurs to change to better acclimate to their new home with every family of sauropod being represented on skull island to some extant including the titanosaurs with the brontosaurus thanks to both evolution and the anomalous energies of skull island shaping it to become the most numerous sauropod dinosaur on skull island by far. 

The first being the way they mature which was something that genuinely surprised the first explorers by the foundation sent to skull island. Unlike other sauropods, and in fact every dinosaur NOT native to skull island in general, the brontosaurus are in fact viviparous meaning they give birth to live young with it ranging in number depending on the health of the habitat they are in from one to in extremely good cases 12 which at birth are easily the size of a newborn elephant and able to walk in hours of their birth. Now when this was first observed how this feature evolved was heavily debated by the scientists and researchers of our organization with the first belief that held up until the mid 1980s was that the reason they did live birth was due to the ecological constraints of living on skull island which caused them to have a slower rate of reproduction. 

However as more and more information was collected as well as the understanding of sauropods in the field of paleontology would ultimately dispel the notion. Now it is believed that the way the brontosaurus reproduces on skull island is the direct result of the vast array of different egg thieving predators on skull island that its ancestor was totally unused as one of the main beliefs in how titanosaurs were able to out live the other sauropods across the world was that in average they had much more offspring which they put in a nest that while they would grow up alone would ensure that much more would survive to adulthood on average. On skull island this made the usual practice of laying eggs and leaving them to their fate WAY more riskier and more costly to the species thus through unknown means, believed to be a anomalous form of energy that affects the evolution of skull islands animals, the brontosaurus developed the ability to birth live young adopting a more caring quality over quantity approach where the young would be raised by every member of the herd in mostly relative safety. 

Thus the brontosaurus is able to avoid competition with the various other sauropods of skull island by raising their young in their herd while the more mass breeding titanosaurs and other sauropods could lay their eggs without having to deal with brontosaurus doing the same thing they are doing. However since brontosaurus are birthed live they have TREMENDOUSLY reduced infant mortality rates compared to the other long necks on the island as they are all protected by their herd and most will live to reach near adult size with a 90 percent survival rate. With the main causes of death for young brontosaurus being separated from the herd by clever hunters or then accidentally falling off a cliff and the forces of gravity doing the rest. 

Moving on most of the general adaptations the brontosaurus has acquired are for the most part internal as while it superficially resembles traditional sauropods the pressures of skull island has shaped it in ways they are much more dynamic than their Mesozoic ancestors. The first of these are it's means of eating with their teeth along with their neck. In paleontology how sauropod necks actually functioned is at the time of this files creation a still ongoing debate with the currently accepted belief is that complex muscles in their neck managed to support the length along with a complex series of valves and shunts in their circulatory system to enable blood to flow in the animal and allowing it to move to do things such as eat plants at the tops of trees and bend down to drink water from lakes or rivers gently. On skull island their necks have gained more flexibility due to the various energies of the island thus they are able to move them without passing out or losing a flow of blood in them thus they can extend their necks to reach higher than their normal height which is much higher than the other herbivorous animals it shares its environment with thus avoiding competition. 

The next is their pelvis. While brontosaurus is large the various trees of skull island are easily able to reach the height of small to medium sized sky scrapers with many sauropods actually bigger than brontosaurus also present that take advantage of this and avoid competition with it by feasting even higher than the brontosaurus can reach. However despite this brontosaurus has a clever ace on its hand in that it's a part of the sauropod family called the diplodocids which were one of the very few groups of sauropods capable of rearing up onto their back legs for short periods of time. Thus the brontosaurus similar to savannah and forest elephants in Africa will use its massive weight while rearing up to bring down trees to knock them down and feast on food sources it normally would be unable to get. Thus because of how common they are the brontosaurus are the main driving force along with a couple other animals that help to clear open the jungle and other dense habitats on the island for other animals to access as their immense size along with their immense food requirements mean they will be the first animals who go in to clear the forests before followed by the ceratopsians like ferrucutus to chew up and mince the woody leftovers before the ligocristus come in along with other herbivores to finish up the rest. 

This effect is so profound that if the brontosaurus was wiped out or otherwise no longer present in any significant capacity that it's estimated near 80% of the open areas of skull islands savannahs would be consumed by the jungle thus the brontosaurus is one of the most crucial keystone species of skull island that allows both the other animals as well as humans to travel through cleared paths without having to worry about the hidden dangers of the jungles and dense forests. 

Moving away from their ecosystem changing ability they like all sauropods lack the ability to chew but have strong front teeth that allow them to strip and pluck the most hardy plant matter before swallowing them with internal dissections showing they have a advanced digestive system that is not to dissipate to modern bovines where it is a multi chambered stomach that allows for the digestion of any plant Material consumed with the brontosaurus also swallowing rounded rocks and stones to help grind up the material in its stomach more effectively which the animal will do throughout its entire life with their teeth constantly growing and shedding and regrowing throughout their lives along with their gastrolith stones leaving them when they defecate as well with their dung being a good source of nutrition for the various species of dung beetle and detritovores that inhabit the island. 

All in all brontosaurus due to being a very large animal overall is immune from every major predator barring a few exceptions under most normal circumstances as their sheer size means that other than a well placed bite on the neck of the animal or a coordinated attack that leads to it falling off a cliff the brontosaurus is utterly invulnerable....for the adults that is. As a youngster a brontosaurus is much more vulnerable thus they are protected by the whole herd overall but should they managed to be isolated are utterly defenseless against the many carnivores that inhabit the island. However scenarios like these are very uncommon as like elephants in Africa the brontosaurus is able to stomp specific vibrations into the ground to aid them when either finding sources of food or learning what other animals are nearby including other lost members of their herd and when a lone predator thinks they have a free meal in a baby brontosaurus they will think that again when face to face with a full herd of grown brontosaurus who on the low end can number up to a dozen but in the worst end can be near 100 in number many big enough to outsize the predator hunting the youngster. 

While they are typically calm and docile animals normally when it comes to the lives of their young's they will do everything in their power to protect it as while they don't have much in armor and can't actually bite they CAN use their tremendous size in their favor normally as due to their weight they can rear up and use their immense bulk to crush whatever is threatening their young to death which leaves them in nought but a pool of crushed bone, flesh and gore. And if that isn't a option they can still kick their legs as they only need 3 of them to maintain stability with them having large claws and spikes that while normally are used for clearing through dirt and soil can easily stab or impale or slash any unlucky predator which can penetrate through a skull of a small vrex easily if it's positioned correctly. With their final weapon being their long but thick tail which is used for helping the animal maintain balance but is more than able to be swung about to slam and bash even a v Rex either into unconscious or actual death depending on how big they are and the force of the blow inflicted on. 

Thus with these powerful means hunting a brontosaurus is one of the most dangerous tasks for any skull island predator to do as it requires very specific conditions for a hunt to even have a chance of success without the risk of a serious injury. Thus for a lot of predators who are starving what is usually done is a quick dash to a nearby sauropod and depending on their size will rip off a chunk of flesh before fleeing which for the sauropod due to their immense size can heal from and regenerate the tissue fully due to the properties of skull island enabling it so. Meaning most carnivores will usually just snack off an animal when desperate but for the carnivores of a more intelligent variety have to be more creative to take even just one down as not even a vrex will directly confront one unless it's certain it can land a successful bite to its neck without the risk of death or injury. 

Howeve one animal in particular has managed to find a means to not only take down a sauropod but regularly hunt them with advanced coordination skills that being the dromaesaur VENATOSAURUS the most intelligent pack hunting predator on skull island. While they are covered in another file the venatosaurus are the only predators that regularly hunt brontosaurus with them capable of planning it weeks in advance by secretly guiding them to specific areas by dragging along and planting the feces of sauropods in certain ares's particular those near areas of large drops such as cliffs and steep hills using the very scent of them to guide them to being vulnerable before the venatosaurs then begin using incredible coordination skills to chase and herd the animals along with them due to the chaos caused Will stampede to get away and as a result go along the path laid out but the venatosaurs where a few unlucky brontosaurus will lose their balance and fall to their deaths over the cliffs while the herd flees with them unable to properly defend themselves due to the cramped nature of the path they are forced along. 

But regardless of how it's done when a brontosaurus dies there body will become a massive scent like dinner bell for any carnivore nearby as like elephant carcasses in Africa every predator starting with the top order ones to the scavengers will feast on the body which due to how much bio mass it has can be a life saver for many carnivores nearby capable of lasting for almost a year in really large individuals with the area the body is on due to the rich blood the sauropod has will help the plant life around the carcass from more vibrant and fertile really helping to contribute to the vast interconnected circle of life upon the landmass. 

Moving away from death and onto their cycle of life brontosaurus due to their interconnected lifestyle live in large herds that can range from a dozen to almost a hundred individuals that is led by a dominant male who will typically posses distinct scale patterns to differentiate himself from is herd who will be surrounded by various females that will sire his offspring along with his offspring both male and female with both genders dispersing once they reach the age of 20 and will even at times include older sauropods who help to pass on ecological youngsters and even extended relatives to where if a herd member dies they can easily take their place. 

While both genders will leave a herd female brontosaurus will usually be the first to leave a herd followed shortly by males as typically the females help to ensure genetic diversity within the species first before followed by the males with brontosaurus males unless they are the direct sons of the lead brontosaurus will be effectively kept in a shrunken state do to the lead bull exuding pheromones that inhibit further growth on them which serves a two fold purpose the first being that any sauropod NOT sired by the main dominant male can arise to challenge them but also to ensure if a herd is attacked they have an expendable surplus which they can afford to lose with sauropod males who takeover herds usually by challenging the prior male and winning it for themselves with no actual violence occuring between any of the parties before the male will exile the old leader who will go on to form as the leader of survivor herds for brontosaurus who for one reason or another had their herds utterly wiped out wether by mass death via predators or a natural disaster such as a mass flood or landslide where the survivors who are typically orphaned youngsters will be found by a elder along with other exiled elderly males and females be raised and taught on how to survive skull island. 

The reason this has come to be is that due to the overall overwhelming factors against them the brontosaurus as a species have delved very deeply into parental care as killing youngsters that are not their own is wasteful and instead better use them to help ensure the species survive by only ensuring the weak and frail and sick are eliminated from the greater gene pool. Thus the brontosaurus with youngsters of a father and their families is overall very comparable to elephants if musk was no longer an issue and the males were not as aggressive forming very close knit bonds with one another as a whole. With this sense of kinship so strong it can even translate to other species. 

In essence due to their overall generally peaceful nature the brontosaurus is overall a very pleasant animal to be around with the sauropods due to their size having an array of insects, birds, lizards, small pterosaurs, small theropods, monkeys and other creatures who will cling atop the back of the animal and feast on any parasites on its back while also serving as the various eyes and ears for the dinosaur when it is feeding and danger is nearby. When they are in herds the brontosaurus will travel with just about every major group of herbivore on skull island from the ligocristus to the ferrucutus to even the various species of large mammalian herbivores with the most interesting relationship being the skull island elephant 

while covered in another log the skull island elephant is one of the largest mammalian herbivores on skull island tied with the paraceratherium of skull island, the sker buffalos and the kongs in size. But what makes the skull island elephant unique is that herds of either species whenever they come across the orphaned youngster of another species will actually adopt and raise the animal as a whole. While the reasoning for this is still being researched today the main leading theory is that when the elephants first arrived on skull island they overall were a perfect match for the sauropods as their herding behavior and lifestyles were pretty much the same as the skull island elephants , particularly the males , are more composed than their African relatives and much more patient as a whole. With a sauropod in a elephant herd getting the protection of massive elephants with tusks big and strong enough to impale and kill full grown VASTATOSAURUS and stomp around on venatosaurs while orphaned elephants in brontosaurus herds will get the sheer grand size of a brontosaurus as their protection as their massive bodies will protect and shield them from any attacker as a whole with the two species one of the very few that will actually communicate cross species with due to their very similar vocalizations. 

Because of their large size and very recognizable look the brontosaurus of skull island is by far one of the most quintessential dinosaurs of the landmass as it easily conveys both how prehistoric skull island is while also showing just how much different they are compared to its Mesozoic contemporaries in terms of its adaptations over the millions of years of evolution upon the landmass. Across the various settlements and villages the brontosaurus is seen as a great walking giant who only asks to be left alone as its preference for tree top plants means it avoids most confrontations with humans save for those who actually make their homes in the tops of the various treetop habitats of the island. But no matter how it is seen the brontosaurus alongside the kongs and the v rexes stand to represent the absolute pinnacle of natures grandeur upon skull island as only here can humans feel genuinely tiny in the shadows of actual giants......but that does not mean they can be used as slides ....this is a island with dinosaurs.....not the flintstones. 






HELLO EVERYONE! theperson7 here bringing you another deviation this time on the big longneck of skull island the brontosaurus or brontosaurus Baxteri if you watched the 2005 King Kong. Here I wanted to show that despite their size the brontosaurus would be a more grounded and realistic version of a gentle giant like a elephant is where while it does not actively seek conflict it is more than capable of defending itself. Now the first major change I did was the reason they have live birth, the reasoning being that in my version of skull island it's a landmass that is a spatial anomaly being that like the tardis from doctor who it's bigger on the inside but small on the outside where unlike the peter Jackson skull island which was originally as big as Texas but gradually got worn down to being an area as small as the total area for the city of San Francisco. Thus in the film there reason is because of the limitations of island life but in my version that is not the case as instead due to the spatial anomalies of skull island it retains a constant area of size despite its geologic turbulence retaining an area comparable in size to the us state of Texas or the European nation France and the Low Countries of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Meaning that while it is small it's not so small to warrant it rather the reason is because of how much deadly the predators are in the youth stage of a brontosaurus that unless they lay massive amounts of eggs the only other option is live birth in the safety of the herd. Which while they're reproduction is slow the rate of mortality is almost zero whereas other sauropods on skull island have much higher amounts allowing the brontosaurus to become pretty common across the island. But generally everything else that exists about the animal I kept mostly the same except the other addition I made is that I made have a more cooperative nature with other Animals particularly the native skull island elephant which I plan to cover in a future file.....but that's just about it for my deviation today don't forget to leave a comment and fave for in the next profile we will cover the most skilled and most cunning hunter of skull island....THE VENATOSAURUS
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Date Taken
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JAGXD's avatar

The classic Brontosaur! This was one of my favorite parts in the movie!