Dead Engineers

Like @Feebs said @liquid4ce71, the Xenomorphs or other creatures that killed off the Engineers on the planetoid probably died off. Or just decided to go hunting and visit the other temples on the planetoid. You also brought up the issue of the nest in Aliens. That film was directed by Cameron and he, not Ridley decided to place the Xeno Queen into the story. That idea is not Ridleys. You have to remember that the original Xenomorph in Alien grew very quickly to adulthood. If Ripley did not kill it, it would have eventually died off. About the connection to the Alien and Prometheous franchises. Mr. Ridley Scott said repeatedly that Prometheous takes place in the Alien universe. It has a connection but it is a different story unto itself.

Well what I think is that it's been 2000 years since the outbreak happened. During the time between the outbreak and the arrival of Prometheus the creatures might have died somewhere in that planet. The original Alien had very short lifespan so maybe these have too.

The only logical way to explain it is the same as this one from Alien.... We assume the Space Jockey was chest busted by a Xeno from getting Face Hugged right? So how come no one came across the adult Xeno that came from the Space Jockey or the remains of the Face Hugger? There was a hole in the floor that they could have escaped through but we dont know where they got to from there. And the same could go with Prometheus they barely explored the Temple and there is many places the Organisms could escape, we only need to look at the Hammerpedes as the crew only came across the one in Milburns mouth the 2nd time and after it ran away they never came across it again. There are a lot of inconsistencies with those Dead Engineers. could they some how be asexual and then if infected with the Goo they can then become impregnated with some kind of Face Hugger like Shaw did? But then the sarcophagus well 3 had Chest Buster holes in them and the original concept sketched showed the sarcophagus contained suited Engineers like the Space Jockey, with clearly Chest Bust Holes. And the Mural shows Bald Humanoids with Face Huggers on them and the Giger Original again showed Space Jockeys with Face Huggers on them. But then the movie and Ridley have left other clues to inform us that those Engineers got infected by the Goo... Again they never really did their homework, just another Lindeloff plot device that he never gives much thought to and we see this through out all his movies. There appeared to be no such holes or inconsistencies with Sphaights draft and it was as simple as the process in Alien.

I just finished watching the bonus features, and in the extended/deleted scenes there is one that shows Millburn holding up the skin of what you would think is the chestburster that had grown. But, I'm not totally convinced they would have just died off on the planet. The space jockey on LV 426 had been dead for what 2000 years? and the eggs were still good to go. @rubirosa- you're completely right about Cameron directing Aliens, that had slipped my mind.

@Rubirosa - you are correct about the thing between Cameron and Ridley. The skin at start is from Hammerpede.

Thanks @Feebs.

My thoughts were at some point that the engineers might be killed off by humans from Earth, assuming there might be an expedition to the planet prior to Prometheus mission. If xenos/bioweapons killed them, why would they leave them piled up instead of using them to procreate and build a colony (like in Aliens)? The site of dead engineers looked like a result of holocaust-type killing, which probably only humans are capable of... But of course that theory of mine would contradict with the fact that corpses (or at least the decapitated corpse, as stated by Shaw) were thousands of years old )) Oh well, just a thought

"..assuming there might be an expedition to the planet prior to Prometheus mission..." What an interesting plotline,,that Prometheus is not the first humanoid crew to make it to this moon.. I say this in case other seedings were left on other worlds decipher the same symbols,, Can you imagine the shock to Shaw/David..if the next installment shows we earthlings were not the first to the Engineers' world?

The bodies piled there weren't killed by xenomorphs. All of the engineers the crew of Prometheus found dead were running from what for the sake of argument I will call an airborne weapon of mass destruction that causes people's heads to explode. If you look closely at the scene, there is one hole in the head and helmet of one of the engineers there. It is the only hole I can see. It must be what killed these engineers, and it was the death by decaptitation that prevented the engineer whose head they took to the ship from exploding before because when they tricked the flesh into thinking it was still alive the process continued and that head exploded. The engineers were running from this fate, which may have been caused by breathing in some chemical or biological weapon that was dispersed into the air by accident or design. Xeno's would have organized the bodies more neatly, and there might still be signs of them around. I don't know where people get the idea that they are short-lived, because that wasn't established ever before that I know in any alien movie. After 2,000 years, you'd still think they could be dead, but still, people only assume that the holes in the dead bodies are in their chests when they're in the heads. This is a very common misunderstanding.