It turns out the iconic Jaws poster design isn’t as terrifying as you thought

Even if you haven’t seen the original Jaws movie, you’ve surely seen the poster design. A permanent entry in our pick of the best movie posters, it captures the drama and tension of Spielberg’s film simply and efficiently, grabbing the viewer’s attention with little information.

Cleverly controlling the viewer’s eye, the poster shows the captivating menace of a great white shark rising through the water towards a woman who swims on the surface obvious to the danger below – or does it?

The artwork for the Jaws movie poster was originally created for Peter Benchley’s novel, which the film is based on. The art for the initial hardback edition, by Paul Bacon, was much more minimalist, on a black background. Publisher Doubleday hired the New York illustrator Roger Kastel to recreate the artwork and make the shark look less like “a penis with teeth” for the subsequent paperback release.

To achieve that, Roger decided to do some research into what sharks actually look like, so he hit the American Museum of Natural History’s ichthyology collection (that’s the branch of zoology that deals with fishes, but you knew that).

Ryan Thoni, curatorial associate of ichthyology, has revealed in a post on the New York museum’s Instagram account that the shark specimen that Roger studied and photographed for his key art still exists in the collection today – but it’s not a great white; it’s a less terrifying short-fin mako shark.