Were fell beasts meant to be dinosaurs? Pterosaurs? Did tyrannosaurus rex once stalk the hills and dales of middle earth?
One of Tolkein's letters says they aren't pterosaurs, despite the resemblance.
>>93201183All of sauron mounts have a sense of “creatures of an older world” to them, what with the army of direwolves, mammoths, flying dinosaurs and other nondescript great beasts. Like the kind of army you could see an evil king from conan amassing.
>>93201183Fuck off to /lit/, how many deleted Tolkien threads have you made today?
>>93201417Appendix N is a Casus Belli for fantasy fiction.
>>93201250Yeah, but they resemble old, outdated depictions of pterosaurs.
>>93202180Nice workup.
>>93201407I'm pretty sure that every army Conan ever fought was made up of men, at least in Howard's original works. Then again there was the fuckawesome Conan the Adventurer cartoon where there were serpent-men, so I guess if we go outside of Howard's stories we could see them....man I gotta go rewatch that cartoon, it was great.
>>93202200It makes sense when you read Perelandra and realize that Tolkien and Lewis were both working through their ideas of evolution and prehistory and expressing it through their work. It seriously bothered their views of history, mythology, and religion.
>>93202503Oh, I thought you were just saying that as set-up for the racist joke. That's what I meant. Like>these were this>these were that>and these were niggers
>>93202571Of course not. This isn't /lit/. We're classier here.
>>93202503Oh I assumed it was a "hur dur SJWs" bit. That's more of an interesting idea though, I could see that.
I haven't actually read LOTR but based on the posted description, the movie portrayals seem relatively accurate? Even if Tolkien didnt mean for them to pterosaurs, that's basically what he's describing, they're that -kind- of animal.
>>93203116If we're sticking with evolution true flight has evolved four times and fully half of them (bats and pterosaurs) used membranous wings. Out of the "strong maybes" we get equivalent structures in gliding frogs, lizards and flying fish. Even more if you count webbing between the limbs like sugar gliders and other lizards. Our only exceptions are birds, insects and gliding snakes. Besides that, the balrog and watcher arent based on anything from prehistory, and neither is shelob unless you interpret her sting as being a tail and being some form of proto-arachnid, but afik most noteworthy spider fossils were discovered recently. The largest being from the 80s and "earliest true spider fossil being named attercopus, so likely found by hobbit nerds and not the other way sroundAnd even then thats a reach compared to just assuming he mashed the two most popular arachnids togetherPoint is the perosaur theory is a solid maybe
>>93204319>shelob unless you interpret her sting as being a tail and being some form of proto-arachnidThat’s a great idea.
>>93202503I'm gonna be honest, I thought you were doing a racism joke like the other anons, but your point actually makes a lot of sense. respect.
>>93201407>nondescript great beastsOh yeah, the ones that are dragging Grond.I don't remember if they were in the book, or the movie, or both, or just in the book and I imagined seeing them in the movie.They were described as some sort of prehistoric beasts too, no?
