The Case of the Velociraptor

FAS Astronomers Blog, Volume 31, Number 14a.

The dinosaur in the movie Jurassic Park, called Velociraptor, was modeled after another dinosaur named Deinonychus. I guess the movie name sounded scarier and it was probably easier to pronounce. Although, Gregory S. Paul classified Deinonychus as a species of Velociraptor in his 1998 book Predatory Dinosaurs of the World: A Complete Illustrated Guide, which could have caused some of the confusion.

• Velociraptor was smaller than the movie dinosaur at 3 feet, had feathers, and didn’t hunt in packs. Henry Fairfield Osborn named Velociraptor after the Latin velox (swift) and raptor (thief) in 1924.
• Deinonychus was a bit more like the movie dinosaur. It may have hunted in packs, although not in the organized fashion that the movie depicted. It also had a sharp claw on its foot like the movie dinosaur. It was, however, larger than the movie dinosaur at around 10 feet. John Ostrom first discovered Deinonychus in 1964, making it a recent discovery.

In 1975, Jim Jensen discovered some dinosaur fossils at Dalton Wells in Moab, Utah. He couldn’t identify them, so his findings were mostly forgotten. In 1991, Jim Kirkland unearthed some more bones including a claw that looked much like the one on Deinonychus, but larger at around 15 inches. After learning about Jensen’s bones, he concluded that they all were from a new and larger raptor (Kirkland, et al. 1993).

While Velociraptor is only the size of a large turkey, this newly discovered dinosaur was more like a large bear at over 20 feet. Some argued that this was the raptor from the movie, so Kirkland thought about naming it Utahraptor spielbergi after Steven Spielberg, but that fell through. So, the new dinosaur became Utahraptor ostrommaysorum instead. Although, Utahraptor did not make it into the movie, it was the lead character in a 1996 novel (Raptor Red) by Robert Bakker, and it might have been the model for the Toronto Raptors logo.

Utahraptor did produce some controversy. Some suggested that it should be named the state dinosaur of Utah. However, Allosaurus already claimed that title. So, an agreement was reached making Utahraptor the state dinosaur and relegating Allosaurus to the state fossil.