Velociraptor is the 3 to 5 meter long, 6-foot tall dromaeosaurid theropod carnivore that appears in all Jurassic Park films and film-based media. The Raptors are the main antagonists of the first film and the secondary antagonists of the second and third films. Palaeontologists have found Velociraptor fossils in central Asia and China, although related species have appeared in North and South America. It was a small, fast, carnivorous therapod that walked on three-toed feet with a distinctive sickle-shaped claw.
Not only was it smaller than the raptors in Jurassic Park, it also looked very different. A light, feathery coating that would have made it look more like an aggressive turkey than the scaly creatures we know from the movies.
Around 2m in length, half a metre in height and 7kg in weight, the Velociraptor was half the size of the creatures portrayed in Jurassic Park.
Although related species such as the Deinonychus and Utahraptor were actually bigger than the creatures onscreen. It was a mid-sized Dromaeosaurid, a family of feathered therapods. But it was feisty, and fast, and brainy.
Specimens discovered later pieced the whole picture together: a bipedal, bird-like creature with several distinctive features. Like other Dromaeosaurids, it had a long tail and large feet with three strongly curved claws similar to the wing bones of modern birds. It also had long, wing-like arms and a wishbone similar to those of modern birds, but they were not big enough to support flight. But that's not to say Velociraptor didn't frequently eat Protoceratops carcasses.
In , researchers unearthed Protoceratops fossils marred with marks and grooves matching raptor teeth, as well as two teeth that belonged either to Velociraptor or another dromaeosaurid. After analyzing the remains, Hone and his colleagues determined that the raptor didn't kill the plant-eater.
Instead, it fed on the Protoceratops , which likely had little meat left on it hence the bite marks on the herbivore's jaws and raptor's knocked-out teeth , according to the study, published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.
In , Hone and his colleagues also discovered that Velociraptors sometimes ate pterosaurs , when the team found a large pterosaur bone in the guts of a Velociraptor. The pterosaur had a wingspan of about 6. The fossil consisted of a skull that was crushed but complete and a toe claw.
Velociraptor fossils have been found in the Gobi Desert, which covers southern Mongolia and parts of northern China. The species was described based on a partial adult skull.
Like the "Fighting Dinosaurs," other Velociraptor fossils were found in arid sand dune environments. Precambrian: Facts About the Beginning of Time. Mesozoic Era: Age of the Dinosaurs. In fact, they have only been found in Central Asia around Mongolia. Were they intelligent? Well, for a dinosaur, it is thought they were somewhat intelligent due to their brain size relative to body size.
For reference, the dinosaur that is thought to have been the smartest of all dinosaurs was the Troodon; it is thought to have been around as smart as a primitive opossum. So there goes the whole Philosraptor thing out the window. The deepest thoughts a Velociraptor ever thought were probably on the level of the Seagulls in Finding Nemo.
So what were they thinking in Jurassic Park? The Deinonychus were also raptors, but were significantly bigger than the Velociraptors, coming in at about 12 feet long, about 6 feet tall, and weighing about pounds full grown. The Deinonychus also were thought to have occasionally hunted in packs to bring down larger prey and were thought to have been very fast. Their habitat was in the forests of North America. Although, clearly they were at least smart enough to work together to bring down larger prey when the need arose.
It fits the size kinda… it is a little big and other features but believed to be feathered like other Dromaeosauridaes of the raptor in the movies. Plus it was found in , you guessed it, Utah which is right around the corner to Montana, geographically speaking.
I apologize for the broken sentences but I wanted to have it written like I was thinking it… if that makes sense.
That would allow them to take down larger prey due to being able to precisely strike at vitals…. It seems like one problem with saying Deinonychus is just like Velociraptor in JP is that while Deinonychus was 6 ft tall he still only weighed about lbs. So even then the movie is exaggerating its size. Paul was a major proponent of consolidating genera: he felt, for example, that rather than having Tyrannosaurus rex, Tarbosaurus bataar, and Daspletosaurus torosus the species rex, bataar, and torosus should all have been in the genus Tyrannosaurus.
With me so far? Another proposed realignment was the species antirrhopus from the genus Deinonychus into the genus Velociraptor. The intelligence, on the other hand, was a very speculative invention of fiction done to increase suspense and drive the plots.
I knew most of that since childhood. I learned about the Deinonychus like a few months after seeing Jurassic Park the first one in the cinemas when it first came out. About their intelligence. But birds are at least smart enough to survive in the wild, and predators tend to be more intelligent than herbivores and wild animals are smarter than tame animals.
So, to compare them to a turkey is not very scientific of you in my opinion. Then, remember also that turkeys are domesticated animals that have been bred for their meat, not their intelligence for a very long time.
I think their wild ancestors might have been brighter. Just saying. Birds are extremely smart. Read some of the research they have done on a certain species of Crows. They have the ability to solve complex problems…..
They put peddles near the tube. The crows would actually take the peddles, throw them in the water to make it raise and eat the food. Actually, Velociraptor is a genus. Not a species. Some Velociraptors were the size of a domesticated turkey but some were larger. Utahraptor, for instance, was approximately 9 feet tall. And look at this page. It about dinosaur intelligence. So they are technicaly not a Velociraptors but a distant cousin and there are only 2 recognized species in the Velociraptor genus.
What if, the actual truth is that paleontologists were wrong? I mean like what IF if T. And what if triceratops were carnivores? This is a useless debate as no one will ever know exactly how intelligent any extinct dinosaur was. They could have certainly hunted in packs like some modern Hawks, but maybe not, we just do not know for certain. The Velociraptors were an exciting class of dinosaurs and one that I hope that Horner and other scientists can revive, or at least come close.
If evolution is to push foward and make a species more dominant take humans for instance why would dinosaurs evolve backwards into tiny harmless chickens? The evidence is whatever we want it to be for the sake of aurguing. Eddie, I think your understanding of evolution is a bit…incomplete.
Most of these tweaks are detrimental; others make no difference; but some give the organism a small advantage over its business competitors. Over thousands of generations, these minor advantageous changes add up, until the result is a new species.
Evolution is simply the term we use to describe this process of change. For example, the kiwi—a bird whose wings are so tiny as to be invisible beneath its shaggy coat of feathers—had ancestors that could fly, but millions of years ago, when these birds arrived in New Zealand, they found a new home with plenty of food on the ground and no predators to fly away from.
In this environment, a bird with weaker wings could actually be MORE successful than a bird with strong wings, because instead of spending a large portion of its energy growing powerful flight muscles that it would never need to use anyway, it could invest that energy in growing a larger, stronger body or laying sturdier, well-nourished eggs.
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