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.

Makos are a lot smaller than the great white portrayed in the movie. They can grow to up to around three metres in length, but accounts of them trying to attack or prey on humans are very rare. That said, Ryan points out in the video that they are very fast. I think I'd still get out of the water without hanging around to check what species it was.

It seems that Roger may have thought the specimen was a great white. He described it as such in accounts of the history of the artwork. He also said that he was pushed to take some artistic liberty with the proportions, with Doubleday asking him to make the shark bigger after seeing his initial sketches.

The result is a starkly dramatic design that shows the power of minimalism in communicating what a book or movie is about (for the Jaws movie poster, extra foam was added on the surface to cover the swimmer's nakedness). The original artwork went missing, with Roger speculating that an unknown Hollywood executive may have pilfered it.

Roger, who died in 2023, is remembered for several brilliant book covers and movie posters – see the The Empire Strikes Back in our pick of the best Star Wars posters.