Search the Community

In 1993, when Jurassic Park was released to the large public, Velociraptor surprised many with its “small” size yet vicious and swift ways. However, there are some scientific inaccuracies (which most can forgive) about Spielberg’s fast robber. First (this may not be so obvious), as the main “raptors” were adults, their pedal unguals (the famous “killing claws”) should have been less pronounced and recurved than in those of juveniles (Martyniuk 2012; which probably explains why young dromaeosaurs would have been more arboreal than mature individuals). Second, the hands: in Jurassic park, the hands of the Velociraptor were very flexible and turned downwards, capable of opening doors. However, in real life, this was not the case. In fact, like birds, Velociraptor and other dromaeosaurids would have their hands turned more inwards. In all Jurassic Park movies, S. Spielberg gave the “raptors” a quite boxy and short head. The fossils however, show a long and narrow snout. The North American dromaeosaurids like Achillobator, Utahraptor or Deinonychus display a stout head, and people would thus believe that he got inspiration from the North American dromaeosaurids. The size. That’s one of Spielberg’s (and Crichton’s) biggest errors concerning the Velociraptor. In J-P, the Velociraptor are as tall as a man. However, this swift hunter reached up to our hips maximum. But, we can forgive this, because when Deinonychus antirrhopus was discovered, there was some confusion and some authors, including Paul (1988 in Predatory Dinosaurs of the World) referred to it as “Velociraptor antirrhopus”. At the beginning of JP-1, the movie featured a dinosaur dig in Montana. The protagonists were digging out a complete Velociraptor skeleton. That cannot be possible at all, because Velociraptor lived in Mongolia (Osborn 1924). Yet another confusion with Deinonychus. However, the biggest mistake is the absolute lack of feathers. There is a huge body of evidence that all dromaeosaurids had feathers, even Velociraptor (Turner et. al 2007). However, this can be forgiven because the first feathered dinosaur (Sinosauropteryx prima) was found 3 years (in 1996) after the official release of Jurassic Park. Unfortunately, upon viewing the movie Jurassic World (in other words Jurassic Park 4), I came to the conclusion that the Velociraptor(s) had retained all the erroneous features I noted above, without a correction in sight.