Real life velociraptors were tiny and pathetic
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preachcaleb — 10 years ago(March 30, 2016 06:35 AM)
Like I said, outdated science. Like people using Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus as two separate animals.
I believe Crichton used outdated science that listed Deinonychus as an off-shoot of raptor or a raptor itself.
Plus, as the other poster said, velociraptor just sounds way cooler.
Let's be bad guys. -
MatthewKeen — 10 years ago(March 30, 2016 11:46 AM)
Like people using Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus as two separate animals.
Except that's no longer outdated.
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/scientists-say-time-reinstate-brontosaurus/
I believe Crichton used outdated science that listed Deinonychus as an off-shoot of raptor or a raptor itself.
Except Crichton didn't. Spielberg made them much larger than they were in real life. Only AFTER the movie was filmed and released did paleontologists declare Utahraptor, first discovered in 1975, as a separate species.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utahraptor
Listen to themthe children of the night. What music they make! -
preachcaleb — 10 years ago(March 30, 2016 12:03 PM)
Except that's no longer outdated.
Thank you for proving my point: science marches on.
Except Crichton didn't. Spielberg made them much larger than they were in real life.
Except Spielberg didn't. Crichton did. Spielberg based his raptors on Crichton's description. Crichton described them as 6 feet tall.
Let's be bad guys. -
MatthewKeen — 10 years ago(March 31, 2016 09:04 AM)
Except Spielberg didn't. Crichton did. Spielberg based his raptors on Crichton's description. Crichton described them as 6 feet tall.
The interviews with Spielberg all said he made them larger. Crichton's only real description of them in Jurassic Park was "Pound for pound, a velociraptor was the most rapacious dinosaur that ever lived. Although relatively smallabout two hundred pounds, the size of a leopardvelociraptors were quick, intelligent, and vicious, able to attack with sharp jaws, powerful clawed forearms, and the devastating single claw on the foot."
It was Spielberg and Koepp who changed the size, feeling that the real creature wouldn't be menacing enough.
http://jurassicpark.wikia.com/wiki/Utahraptor
Listen to themthe children of the night. What music they make! -
preachcaleb — 10 years ago(March 31, 2016 09:19 AM)
No, it was Crichton who made them bigger:
"Tim, this is Professor Malcolm," said a voice cutting in on the intercom. "I have just one question for you about this raptor. How old would you say it was?"
"Older than the baby we saw today," Tim said. "And younger than the big adults in the pen. The adults were six feet tall.
The velociraptor was six feet tall, and powerfully built, although its strong legs and tail were hidden by the tables.
Spielberg kept the size described in the book. Crichton made them six-feet tall.
Let's be bad guys. -
Decomposed — 10 years ago(April 01, 2016 07:28 AM)
Crichton did a very good research on dinosaur species etc. He did his job well.
The problem is that in the Velociraptor's case he used a source that was later proved wrong. Here is some interesting information:
The Velociraptors of the first novel aren't misclassified Deinonychus. Instead, they are actually misclassified Achillobator, for the following reasons:
In the novel, Dr. Henry Wu mentions that the amber which the raptors were cloned from came from Mongolia. Therefore, they could not have been Deinonychus, since Deinonychus only lived in North America, not Mongolia.
While writing the novel, Crichton used Gregory S. Paul's book Predatory Dinosaurs of the World as a reference. In Paul's book, he lumped together several dromaeosaurids into the genus Velociraptor, including Deinonychus, which he christened "Velociraptor antirrhopus".
In Paul's book, it is mentioned that the remains of a Velociraptor species slightly larger than V. antirrhopus are known from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia. It is likely that this was the inspiration for Crichton's giant Velociraptors.
At the time, these remains were not yet identified. However, in 1999, it was discovered that they represented a new dinosaur species, which was named Achillobator giganticus.
In the novel, the Velociraptors are described as being 6 feet tall, which is the same height as Achillobator.
At the time that the park was built, Velociraptor mongoliensis was the only sickle-clawed dromaeosaurid known from Mongolia, so when raptors were cloned from Mongolian DNA, the scientists at Jurassic Park probably assumed that they belonged to V. mongoliensis, having absolutely no idea whatsoever that they really belonged to the much larger Achillobator.
Therefore, in conclusion, the scientists at Jurassic Park cloned Achillobators from Mongolian DNA. When they hatched, they assumed that they were Velociraptor mongoliensis. And the reason why Crichton included the Achillobators in the novel is because he had read about them in Paul's book.
http://jurassicpark.wikia.com/wiki/Velociraptor_(novel_canon)
For within each death there is always a new life, a new beginning - Dillon, Alien 3 -
Otkon — 9 years ago(April 20, 2016 06:44 PM)
the scientists at Jurassic Park probably assumed that they belonged to V. mongoliensis, having absolutely no idea whatsoever that they really belonged to the much larger Achillobator.
Therefore, in conclusion, the scientists at Jurassic Park cloned Achillobators from Mongolian DNA. When they hatched, they assumed that they were Velociraptor mongoliensis.
It doesn't make any sense that they would assume just because the amber came from a Mongolian Cretaceous stratum that it must be some species of Velociraptor! Nor would their analysis of the cloned specimens have stopped once the animals emerged from eggs. In fact, they would have no idea what DNA they would possibly have when extracting it - certainly not down to a similar genus. And it wouldn't be until the animals were conceived and consistently x-rayed as they grew, then dissected at full size, that the scientists would have enough data to compare the skeletal structures to known and named fossilized exemplar. Once the animals grew to three times the size of anything labelled a Velociraptor in the bone records, the scientists didn't chalk up the DNA to being something still undiscovered like a larger cousin?! Hedging the fudged science in the fictional universe on future real-world finds is just bad rationale.
The fact still remains that Grant misidentifies his 6-foot North American find as Velociraptor. We are led to believe he is the world's foremost expert on this exact topic; he would know that neither what he unearthed in the Badlands nor what was chasing them around Isla Nublar could be properly called Veloci-anything. -
highway_robbery — 10 years ago(March 30, 2016 08:56 AM)
The inaccuracies have been talked about endlessly since it came out - I think you can let them off the hook for the feathers, partly because when the novel was written there wasn't really much evidence of feathered dinosaurs aside from Archaeopteryx and maybe a few others, and partly because of the old "we used DNA from other species to fill the gaps" loophole which you can use to suspend disbelief to a point.
The size is a bit harder to excuse, especially since the novel specifically calls them velociraptors, so I assume Crichton ignored his research there and just used artistic license to make them bigger and more menacing.
I find it funny that on one hand the 1st film seemed to be lauded in the media for presenting dinosaurs in such a realistic way (look how they move!), and on the other criticised it for not being paleontologically accurate (Velociraptor too big, Dilophosaur too small, Brachiosaur's head too big, Gallimimus's palms face down not inwards).
It's probably easier to list the dinosaurs that
were
fairly accurate across the 4 films rather than those that weren't. maybe Parasaurolophus? Ankylosaurus? Triceratops? -
drsaavedrab — 9 years ago(September 04, 2016 02:23 PM)
Dr. Crichton did do a lot of research for the book. While the real velociraptors were indeed pathetic, another species was discovered shortly after the novel came out: The Utahraptor, I think it's called, which is more in line with Dr. Crichton's fictional velociraptors.
He also made a very basic mistake.
Costa Rica doesn't have an air force. Or armed forces of any kind. Much less the capability to bomb the hell out of an island. -
jbaker1-2 — 1 month ago(February 03, 2026 05:03 AM)
They were around six feet long and weighed up to forty pounds. That's a pretty big chicken.
There are 8.2 billion people in the world. 8.19 billion of them have never heard of and don't give a fuck about Charlie Kirk. Get over it. -
SpringheelJack1837 — 4 years ago(July 05, 2021 11:30 PM)
Yeah.
The raptors in JP were a lot more like the Deinonychus.
But then the Dilophosaurus didn’t have frills or spit poison either.
You could explain it all away with the dinosaurs being mutated by amphibian DNA if Alan Grant didn’t describe the raptors as 6ft tall before seeing them on the island -
Donna2.0 — 3 months ago(December 22, 2025 09:49 PM)
I mean holy sh** they were normally not even half the size of a grown man, and they were full of feathers. Grant could have probably killed all 3 of them with a crowbar. In the book Muldoon
Funniest quote ever made about the movie.
Put a muzzle on Tits Malone, PI