{"id":1759,"date":"2010-07-07T07:27:15","date_gmt":"2010-07-07T14:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=1759"},"modified":"2014-05-16T03:00:35","modified_gmt":"2014-05-16T10:00:35","slug":"everything-i-thought-i-knew-about-velociraptors-was-a-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2010\/07\/everything-i-thought-i-knew-about-velociraptors-was-a-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything You Know About Velociraptors Is A Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Velociraptor\"<\/a>Today I found out<\/a> everything you probably think you know about Velociraptors is a lie.<\/p>\n

Now to be fair, everything I “knew” about Velociraptors came from the Jurassic Park movies and so I shouldn’t really be surprised it was all wrong.\u00a0 So if, like me, you thought that Velociraptors were slightly bigger than a human; reptilian looking;\u00a0 hunted in packs; were found in what is now the United States; and were ridiculously intelligent.\u00a0 Well, literally none of that is true.<\/p>\n

Velociraptors were actually only about the size of a domesticated Turkey, being only about 3 feet tall and 6 feet long, with most of the length coming from the tail and weighing in at around 20-30 pounds full grown.\u00a0 More than that, they also looked somewhat like a Turkey as well, but with a long tail obviously.\u00a0 It turns out, Velociraptors were very similar to birds in a lot of ways.\u00a0 They had hollow bones, feathers, built nests for their eggs, and are thought to have behaved very similar to birds.<\/p>\n

As Mark Norell, curator of fossil reptiles, amphibians, and birds at the American Museum of Natural History, stated, \u201cThe more that we learn about these animals the more we find that there is basically no difference between birds and their closely related dinosaur ancestors like Velociraptor. Both have wishbones; brooded their nests; possess hollow bones; and were covered in feathers. If animals like Velociraptor were alive today, our first impression would be that they were just very unusual looking birds.”<\/p>\n

More than that, there has never been one bit of evidence that suggested that Velociraptors hunted in packs.\u00a0 In fact, every fossil found of Velociraptors has seemed to indicate they were solitary creatures.\u00a0 There was even one fossil where the Velociraptor was in the act of trying to kill a Protoceratops, which was a pig sized dinosaur, when a sandstorm came up and buried them both while they were still fighting one another.\u00a0 If they hunted in packs, there should have been more Velociraptors at that find, particularly given the size of the Protoceratops relative to the Velociraptor.<\/p>\n

Next up, the Velociraptors were not found in the United States, as the films suggested: where the paleontologists in the film dug up the Velociraptor skeleton in Montana.\u00a0 In fact, they have only been found in Central Asia around Mongolia.<\/p>\n

Were they intelligent?\u00a0 Well, for a dinosaur, it is thought they were somewhat intelligent due to their brain size relative to body size.\u00a0 But it turns out, that’s basically just saying they were slightly more intelligent than a board with a nail in it.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 So there goes the whole Philosraptor thing out the window.\u00a0 The deepest thoughts a Velociraptor ever thought were probably on the level of the Seagulls in Finding Nemo. “Mine?”\u00a0\u00a0 Hardly the “smarter than dolphins, whales, and some primates” that Dr. Alan Grant in Jurassic Park III suggests.<\/p>\n

Actually, if you’ve ever raised domestic Turkey’s, which I have and don’t recommend, the “just slightly more intelligent than a board with a nail in it”, is about the domestic Turkey’s level of intelligence too.\u00a0 I’m beginning to think Velociraptors were nothing but domestic Turkeys with slightly different bone structure. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

So what were they thinking in Jurassic Park?\u00a0 Well basically, they modeled what they called the “Velociraptor” in the movie after the Deinonychus.\u00a0 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 150 pounds full grown.\u00a0\u00a0 Pretty much picture the “Velociraptor” in Jurassic Park and you get a pretty good idea of what the Deinonychus were thought to have looked like (although there still is some debate over whether they too had feathers, with many researchers leaning that way; so really, picture the “Velociraptor” in Jurassic Park and add feathers and you get the Deinonychus).<\/p>\n

The Deinonychus also were thought to have occasionally hunted in packs to bring down larger prey and were thought to have been very fast.\u00a0 Their habitat was in the forests of North America.\u00a0 Now on the intelligence bit, they too weren’t really thought to have been very intelligent.\u00a0 Although, clearly they were at least smart enough to work together to bring down larger prey when the need arose.<\/p>\n

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, Google Play Music<\/a>, Feed<\/a>), as well as:<\/p>\n