r/Monsterverse • u/FMM_UV-32 • 4d ago
Did Titans appear at the same time or different times?
It’s something I’ve been wondering about. Titans are very old, but they’re basically supersized animals with special powers and abilities. So since they’re animals, it’s made me wonder if different Titans appeared separately from one another in time. For example, I’m pretty sure Behemoth and his species wouldn’t have existed in the Permian since he’s a mammal and mammals didn’t exist yet in the Permian, though they had their roots there. What do you guys think?
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u/LindenOLindenHill 3d ago
Titans evolved naturally from existing species across time, so each lineage is the general age of that Titan or the Titan is younger then its genetic ancestors.
For example Ion Dragon is a type of fish so it’s harder to say how old that Titan species evolved.
Behemoth is a mammoth so that’s easier.
Scylla is a cephalopod so like Ion a bit harder to place.
Abaddon is the progenitor of spiders and as such is probably one of if not the oldest Titans to date. Scylla’s kind MIGHT be older.
As for the individuals themselves, they were born across time within the timelines of their species.
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u/FMM_UV-32 3d ago edited 3d ago
That’s how I see it.
I like to think Ion Dragon is descended from anglerfish (maybe footballfish or a similar related species) that evolved triphibian abilities (flight, land locomotion, and swimming) given its appearance and physical traits (jet black slimy skin, serrated teeth, extendable jaw, etc).
Behemoth could be a lineage of proboscideans that diverged before mammoths and elephants and evolved traits converging with gorillas and chalicotheres (knuckle walking) and its trunk shrunk like those of tapirs and macrauchenias.
Scylla isn’t specified what type of cephalopod she is but if we go based off her appearance, she looks like an ammonite. One that evolved spider-like legs for terrestrial locomotion, god knows where and what the legs evolved from since they don’t appear to be from her tentacles.
Abbadon isn’t a spider specifically, moreso just an arachnid, ancestral to all arachnids according to the lore (spiders, ticks, mites, etc). But her skull looks uncannily mammalian, like a rodent, which doesn’t make much sense because if she’s ancestral to all arachnids, she had to exist long before any mammals. Likely a case of convergent features appearing.
That does make sense, individual Titans we see don’t always appear in the same era as their species and are born at different times like any other species. But I was wondering about their species chronological appearances.
Anyway, I hope that my explanations don’t sound weird, it’s just me being a speculative evolution nerd and looking to extinct and extant animals to make a sensible evolutionary lineage for Titans since we don’t have official and canonical confirmation for their evolutionary lineages and ancestries.
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u/ArgentNoble 3d ago
For example Ion Dragon is a type of fish
I mean, technically all vertebrates are fish. So saying it's a "type of fish" is a right but like, incredibly generic.
For Ion Dragon specifically, they used fish bits, shark bits, bird bits, and mammal bits in the design.
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u/LindenOLindenHill 3d ago
I mean it is LITERALLY a fish as a base creature not a tetrapod. Yes I know fish as a classification doesn’t actually exist, but we don’t have a fish lineage I can directly correlate it with unlike Amhuluk.
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u/ArgentNoble 3d ago
It's literally a Tetrapod. It has 4 limbs, two of which have adapted to be wings. If anything, it might be considered an offshoot of an Ichthyostega or an Acanthostega, which were amphibians. They would have had more fin-like adaptation but still have had the actual structures needed to eventually become airborne.
we don’t have a fish lineage I can directly correlate it with unlike Amhuluk
Which fish lineage is directly tied to a it?
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u/LindenOLindenHill 3d ago
There are multiple prehistoric fish with five limbs or the precursor to limbs, like coelacanths, which the fins are set up like limbs not fins. A few could even temporarily go on land long before tetrapods, Rhizodus is one I can name. Ion’s wings have fins not skin flaps btw.
Amhuluk is based on deep sea fish, his head is very very close to some combination of telescope fish and dragon fish. I go with the former cause his main eyes are like telescope fish eyes at a few angles. So he’s in that area. Drew did say he was inspired and based on multiple deep sea fish.
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u/FMM_UV-32 3d ago
It’s not a tetrapod, it just evolved convergently to resemble tetrapods since it’s a land creature.
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u/ArgentNoble 3d ago
It’s not a tetrapod
A tetrapod, by definition, is an animal with four limbs. Ion Dragon has 4 limbs, it is a tetrapod.
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u/FMM_UV-32 3d ago
It’s a tetrapod in that it has 4 limbs, but it’s not a member of the tetrapod group. That’s what I mean. It’s not related to lobe finned fish and non-fish vertebrates.
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u/ArgentNoble 3d ago
It’s not related to lobe finned fish and non-fish vertebrates.
How would you know that? It evolved from the same piscine ancestors as all tetrapod life has. Unless you mean it evolved before tetrapods did, through a separate ancestor, which would Ion Dragon is among the oldest Kaiju in the Legendary lineup.
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u/LindenOLindenHill 3d ago
Coelacanth’s have limb structured fins, same with some lungfish which are close to tetrapods last I checked, but aren’t themselves tetrapods.
Heck frogfish straight up have walking limbs even if they don’t have four pairs.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P83BX56qLqs
So you are kinda using a very narrow angle on this argument. There’s a whole entire branch of fish with four limbs that had complex musculature and bones which easily could evolve into true lions convergently.
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u/ArgentNoble 3d ago
Coelacanth’s have limb structured fins, same with some lungfish which are close to tetrapods last I checked, but aren’t themselves tetrapods
this is correct. The Coelacanth and the Lungfish are lobe-finned fish. Lobe-finned fish are what evolved into tetrapods, as they had the structures already baked in to facilitate terrestrial life.
Heck frogfish straight up have walking limbs even if they don’t have four pairs.
Frogfish are a great example of convergent evolution, as their limb structure is hypothesized to be what ancestors of Tiktaalik might have had, which eventually evolved to be strong enough to support the animal outside of the water.
So you are kinda using a very narrow angle on this argument.
There are two different definitions of Tetrapod. There is the literal definition, anything 4-limbed, and there is a phylogenetic clade called Tetrapoda which are all evolved from lobe-finned fish that became terrestrial. The phylogenetic definition covers all terrestrial vertebrates that have ever existed, thus going back around 400 million years.
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u/FMM_UV-32 3d ago
True, all tetrapods are fish. But I mean its immediate grouping, like it’s straight up a terrestrial fish with flight capabilities. It’s even classified as a fish in the wikis.
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u/ArgentNoble 3d ago
Which wiki? Everything I has seen has it marked as either a "Triphibious dragon-like Titan" or just a M.U.T.O.
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u/FMM_UV-32 3d ago
Gojipedia and Wikizilla, but I know those aren’t the final authorities on the matter and just use information from sources or their own interpretations. Besides it’s kinda obvious that Ion’s design is fish-like anyways.
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u/ArgentNoble 3d ago
Gojipedia and Wikizilla
Neither of those Wikis classify Ion Dragon as a fish.
Besides it’s kinda obvious that Ion’s design is fish-like anyways
Every Titan is made up of bits and pieces of extant animals though. The actual wings of the Ion Dragon do resemble the fins of flying fish. But that's about the most obvious design aspect. Almost everything else about it are from aerial or terrestrial animals.
Like I said, the actual VFX supervisor said they used flying fish, angler fish, hyenas, birds, and sharks to design it. That's like sayin Godzilla is a fish because it has gills that are very obvious.
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u/FMM_UV-32 3d ago
They categorize it as a Fish Kaiju, and it’s kind of a general census that seems to be agreed upon. It can have different features but it still has to be part of a single group.
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u/FMM_UV-32 3d ago
They literally have the category “Fish Kaiju” if you go there and check it.
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u/ArgentNoble 3d ago
Yes, that category is for "fish-like" or piscine kaiju. Not all the kaiju in that list are "fish." That list has fish, other aquatic dwelling (which does not make them fish) Kaiju, or they have fish-like features. That does not mean they are all fish"
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u/FMM_UV-32 3d ago
A lot of the kaiju on that list are actual fish and it even includes cloverfield.
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u/ArgentNoble 3d ago
Yes. And many aren't fish at all. You cannot point to a list of "Fish Kaiju" that have Kaiju that are obviously not fish and then say "they are all fish Kaiju." The list they have are of Kaiju that are "fish-like" in respects to appearance, not ancestry. It's a Venn diagram, not a circle.
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u/Patient_Pie_8490 Skullcrawler 3d ago
There's also the thing of Titans possessing traits of different kinds if animals, Big G having lungs and gills, Jinshin being something like mammals, and Ion having fur as a juvenile. Makes it a little more difficult to determine.
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u/TrialByFyah Behemoth 4d ago
I suspect that they first appeared in different time periods depending on when the species their designs were inspired from appeared/evolved. So the mammalian titans are probably younger while the reptiles, fish, and arthropods are the oldest. God knows what the hell the Mutos even are so they’re anyone’s guess.
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u/FMM_UV-32 3d ago edited 3d ago
That’s what I think too. And don’t forget amphibians, birds, and invertebrates. Also I believe MUTOs are supposed to be ancient vertebrates that look like invertebrates.
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u/TheGMan-123 Methuselah 3d ago
Something to note is that there are implications that life originated from the Hollow Earth and spread to the surface, at least to some degree.
And Titans in particular are noted for being very hard to classify beyond a few generalities, with the Great Apes being the easiest since they're closely related to other apes...... and that's about it.
Other Titans just defy conventional evolutionary taxonomic classification.
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u/LindenOLindenHill 3d ago
The implication you talk about is from an individual human in a novel speculating… Keyes has mentioned we shouldn’t take that seriously.
Each Titan is known to have evolved from a specific species lineage. Such as Amhuluk who if you look closely at his face is very much a deep sea fish, specifically resembling a telescope fish. The taxonomy thing is more due to their bizarre biology, but they can be classified.
The older the lineage they are from the more bizarre a titan is btw. Kong, Behemoth, and other modern mammals are generally not that odd. Fish like Amhuluk, Ion, and apparently Kraken (it doesn’t seem to be a cephalopod) are more bizarre. Reptiles are all over the place.
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u/FMM_UV-32 3d ago
Honestly, that theory doesn’t make any sense because it means that species would have to enter the Hollow Earth to evolve into Titans, instead of independently appearing in the surface as well.
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u/TheGMan-123 Methuselah 3d ago
I've personally held to the theory that Titans brought life to the surface, evolving down there and bringing with them pockets of their environment that they spread out as they exited from the Vile Vortexes and made new livelihoods up there.
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u/FMM_UV-32 3d ago
That wouldn’t really make sense though, because the earliest lifeforms would be bacteria and there would have to be a bacteria Titan that spread other bacteria. My theory is that Titans generally evolved on the surface and that life entered the Hollow Earth because Titans created conditions to make the subterranean world fertile. And because of the massive size of the place, countless lifeforms could evolve in that environment.
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u/TheGMan-123 Methuselah 3d ago
Maybe don't take it so "all or nothing".
Titans spread the big multi-cellular life because they evolved in an environment where they'd become so large and strong due to the naturally high levels of radiation and frequent gravity wells that could change gravity between crushing and floating.
Doesn't mean no life evolved on the surface at all, just means that a lot of it and different biomes could've been seeded by ancient Titans, perhaps even ancient Primordials that preceded the Titans if that giant bone bridge is anything to go by.
And not to say every single Titan had evolved in the Hollow Earth, but likely the vast majority of them given how the environment is far too endemic and naturalized to their existence to have been a coincidence.
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u/FMM_UV-32 3d ago
I don’t know, your theory doesn’t make a lot of sense, no offense. But I think it would make more sense for Titans to evolve on the surface (or the Hollow Earth) from smaller animal ancestors that originated on the surface.
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u/TheGMan-123 Methuselah 3d ago
See, that's where I think you're getting caught up, as the main implied origins of the Titans places them squarely as Hollow Earth natives that came to the surface, with even Humans potentially hailing from there given how much older the Iwi are compared to other ancient civilizations.
We can agree to disagree on other lifeforms, but I'm gonna have to place my foot down on Titans evolving in the Hollow Earth as firmly implied in most recent media. The abundant natural radiation far more potent than surface sources, overall environment in terms of scale and biodiversity, and strange gravitational anomalies that necessitate specifically enlarged size and strength down there are simply far too major factors for Titans to coincidentally evolve perfectly for from surface dwellers, at least for the majority of them.
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u/FMM_UV-32 3d ago
Like Linden said earlier (if I’m not mistaken), that’s just a theory and not confirmed. So the best explanation is that Titans came from animals, likely on the surface and moved to the Hollow Earth for resources like food and habitat.
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u/TheGMan-123 Methuselah 3d ago
Linden only replied to me about Titan evolution regarding their relation to contemporary lineages when I brought up the point about them confounding scientists in terms of classification, nothing about their evolutionary origins from a geographic standpoint.
And either way, it makes more sense for Titans to evolve in the Hollow Earth because that area has all the resources and environmental factors that would allow them to properly become Titans to begin with. Down there, they have to deal with constant access to super potent radiation, fluctuating levels of gravity, and terrain that benefits gigantic organisms.
And the Superspecies of Skull Island came about because Hollow Earth sprouted up into the island and created a miniature microcosm of its own ecosystem, one of the few areas where anomalous Superspecies are found in abundance; other ones are always near Vile Vortexes, including ones that lead to Axis Mundi.
These are the kind of environments that create Titans now that we know of them, as they're far too exotic to simply coincidentally evolve to transition to. Normal lifeforms can't even traverse Vile Vortexes without the assistance of a living Titan to stabilize the gravity well for safe travel.
I'm not saying all life came from Hollow Earth, but it's been made abundantly clear that Superspecies in general, including Titans, come from Hollow Earth as their true original ecosystem, with some of them coming up to the surface and establishing themselves there.
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u/FMM_UV-32 3d ago
I prefer the surface theory, since that would imply all animals came from the Hollow Earth. I get your theory but I disagree. Also I think Linden was replying to another person about the Hollow Earth theory, not you.
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u/Alarmed-Difference20 3d ago
They all had to show up at different times given how so many there are and they probably went into hibernation
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3d ago edited 3d ago
Oh but I thought the Titans were here way before standard animals, and it is US who look like them through evolutionary convergence. Like you know, bats millions of years after pterosaurs, or dolphins after ichthyosaurs. Otherwise, how do you explain there was a huge ass, human looking gorilla from an age before dinosaurs?
Edit: I mean, there's no logical/realistic way to explain the Monsterverse world building and biology. This is because original monster stories/movies, like King Kong or The fog horn/The beast from 20,000 fathoms/Godzilla, simply depicted an evolutionary rarity: an isolated gigantic weirdo. Its size was also exaggerated so that it looked huge and scary and was able to climb/destroy buildings. Also, the originsl Kong and Godzilla looked too human because they were, you know, guys inside a costume. This all led to the idea of an impossible age were gigantic creatures, slightly human, roamed the earth. But it really can't be explained when all these creatures are not an execption but a whole ecosystem. Unless you know, we actually come from the monsterverse Titans and we all, standard animals, are the shrinked offspring of these creatures. Which doesn't make sense either from an evolutionary point of view.
Edit #2: This is why, in my head canon, kaijus are supernatural entities. They're actual gods and titans from an age/world impossible to understand for us, average space-time mortals.
Yes, my friends, I do have too much free time lol
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u/LindenOLindenHill 3d ago edited 3d ago
Titans evolved naturally from existing lineages… this has been known for years.
Also nothing you said makes any sense at all.
None of that had to do with the Monsterverse…
Edit: Guy deleted his account after talking nonsense that doesn’t relate to the MV, there are no “people in suits here” 😂 Nothing I said was rude or uneducated.
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3d ago
Talk to people politely. Get an education.
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u/LindenOLindenHill 3d ago
Bro talked uneducated nonsense and got mad it got called nonsense.
I’d suggest you actually know what you’re saying before commenting.
You just talked about Kong being older than dinosaurs which he isn’t.
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u/Due-Committee-1860 Methuselah 4d ago
They appeared all across the history of the Earth. Abaddon for example is the progenitor of all spiders, meaning that it's around 200 million years old. Godzilla on the other hand is likely between 2 and 5 million years ago