Board Thread:Movie Discussions/@comment-3367060-20131122012801/@comment-3542924-20140715172545

HeiseiMekaG wrote: GodzillaIsland7.2 wrote: Kaijuzilla2000 wrote:

Lukeritchie wrote: When I buy rights to godzilla I'm going to take out the scouts sorry for those godzilla fans He means scutes. No. You will never get the rights to Godzilla without first telling Toho what you plan to do. You're both wrong, they're actually dorsal plates. Well, according to Word of God, at least; biologically, they'd most likely be closer to scutes, since that's the most phylogenetically likely option given his backstories and design all suggesting Godzilla being an archosaur of some kind.

But then again, this is the same series that has carnivorous ankylosaurs, double-brained dinosaurs, time travel, space hydras, moth deities and other such ideas...so maybe biology in the Godzilla canon is different to that of ours.

(EDIT: As it turns out, the plates of stegosaurs (what Godzilla's dorsal scutes were based on) are just highly-modified osteoderms. At least the middle row of Godzilla's dorsal scutes are proper osteoderms, while the outer two can either be proper osteoderms or scutes. So technically, both terms are equally valid!)

Oh HeiseiMekaG, don't you get it yet? "Scutes" ONLY apply to Zilla. Godzilla's back structure ARE called "Dorsal Plates", which are similar to a Stegosaurus', and the Stegosaurus is one of the three dinosaur types whose physical characteristics were combined by the designers at Toho, to create Godzilla, with the other two being a Tyrannosaurus (in terms of the body overall) and a Iguanodon (in terms of the arms).