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The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island (King Kong S.) Hardcover – 5 Dec. 2005
- Print length208 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPocket Books
- Publication date5 Dec. 2005
- ISBN-101416502580
- ISBN-13978-1416502586
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Product details
- Publisher : Pocket Books; First Edition (5 Dec. 2005)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 208 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1416502580
- ISBN-13 : 978-1416502586
- Best Sellers Rank: 575,769 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 490 in Film Reference
- 744 in Video Photography
- 1,545 in Film History & Criticism (Books)
- Customer reviews:
About the authors

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Daniel Falconer has been a designer at Weta Workshop for more than twenty years, producing conceptual art as part of the design team on many of the company's high profile projects, including The Lord of the Rings, King Kong, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and The Hobbit movie adaptations. As author, Daniel has written a dozen books for Weta Workshop, including The Art of District 9 and the seven part Chronicles series, showcasing both Weta's work and that of the associated film service companies based in Wellington, New Zealand, on The Hobbit film trilogy. He lives in Wellington with his wife Catherine and two daughters, reveling in his dream career of playing in imaginary worlds every day.
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Top reviews from United Kingdom
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The World of Kong is genuinely an amazing read, gives alot of insight into the world established by the 2005 Peter Jackson King Kong film, go into tons of detail about the various animals that lived in the world, the sheer quality & quantity of artwork put on display here is amazing. It's something that I think everyone should experience, though sadly it was a limited print book, and you're going not going to find a decent quality book that's below 150 Euro.
Top reviews from other countries
However, as there is only so much you can fit into a movie, we only got to see a small handful of Skull Island's local wildlife.
This book provides illustrations and info on both all the creature types you saw in the film (including, of course, Kong's species), plus a whole heap of other creatures that never got featured.
As any familiar with the setting will know, Skull Island is a lost world of prehistoric survivors. Naturally, non-avian dinosaurs are a major example of this. However, Skull Island is also home to many other surviving prehistoric groups, including raisuchians, therapsids, pelycosaurs, lepospondyl amphibiams and so on.
The island is also home to such strange creatures as huge flying rodents, giant invertebrates, giant predatory fish, swarming flesh-eating lampreys and much more.
One thing that sets Skull Island apart from the standard "lost world" scenario is the fact that it does not make the assumption that the prehistoric survivors would come to an evolutionary standstill. The prehistoric survivor creatures of Skull Island do not belong to any of the species that actually existed in prehistory, but are instead evolutionary descendants of them. One can still see similarities between the creatures and their prehistoric ancestors, but there are also noticeable differences. e.g. The Vastatosaurus rex looks a lot like its Tyrannosaur ancestors, but has a thicker, more heavily armoured skull and a third digit on each hand (T-rex and its closest relatives had only two).
One interesting thing about Skull Island's wildlife is that there are more groups of flying creatures than in the rest of the world. As well as the local insects, birds and flying rodents, Skull Island is also home to flying cynodonts, small flying theropod dinosaurs (who use more of a leathery wing design, rather than the feathery wings of those other flying dinosaurs, the birds), and even a flying frog (though this is a rather poor flyer).
Ironically, while one pterosaur is featured in the book, this is a species that has evolved to be a flightless creature with a lifestyle similar to that of a wading bird.
The book is very well illustrated and manages to feature quite a large amount of creatures, all of which are quite interesting to see and read about.
Overall, this book is quite an excellent example of imaginary natural history.


