 Marsh published his more accurate skeletal reconstruction of Stegosaurus in 1891 , and within a decade Stegosaurus had become among the most @-@ illustrated types of dinosaur . Artist Charles R. Knight published his first illustration of Stegosaurus ungulatus based on Marsh 's skeletal reconstruction in a November 1897 issue of Century Magazine . This illustration would later go on to form the basis of the stop @-@ motion puppet used in the 1933 film King Kong . Like Marsh 's reconstruction , Knight 's first restoration had a single row of large plates , though he next used a double row for his more well @-@ known 1901 painting , produced under the direction of Frederic Lucas . Again under Lucas , Knight revised his version of Stegosaurus again two years later , producing a model with a staggered double row of plates . Knight would go on to paint a stegosaur with a staggered double plate row in 1927 for the Field Museum of Natural History , and was followed by Rudolph F. Zallinger , who painted Stegosaurus this way in his " Age of Reptiles " mural at the Peabody Museum in 1947 . 
