User blog comment:BastionMonk/Jurassic Park IV raptors/@comment-1791057-20130826032229

Gonna clear up a few misconceptions I feel are being presented here:  The JP Raptors are Deinonychus. Gregory S. Paul, who had classified the recently discovered Deinonychus antirrhopus as well as other species such as Dromeaosaurus and the then yet to be described Achillobator giganticus all under the genus of "Velociraptor". Spielberg used GS Paul's Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, where Paul first outlined this odd taxonomy, during the making of Jurassic Park, just as Crichton did when writing it. These classifications when he wrote Jurassic Park. It is due to constant scientific updating, that these creatures became scientifically obsolete very soon. These classifications and designs were then carried over to the film version, which Spielberg had already planned on making, before the book was even published. The designs were copied as so to be accurate to the novel, not science.

When Jurassic Park /// came out in '03, in the paleontological community was already favoring the idea that ALL raptors had feathers. But it was already too late for JP as the image of the Deinonychus-sized, featherless Raptor had already been imprinted into the Jurassic Park fan community, and it was too late to go back from that. What they did instead was attempt to "update" the design, however in doing so, the JP/// raptors become even less like a dromaeosarine(the subfamily of dinosaurs that holds all the more famous of the "Raptors", i.e. Utahraptor, Velociraptor, Achillobator, Deinonychus). Despite the few pitiful quills given to the JP/// raptors (which no maniraptorforme, the clade that holds all sickle-clawed dinosaurs and their descendants all the way to modern birds, had), the snout is given two large ridges jutting off of it, which is nothing like any snout of any known maniraptor.

The Raptors of Jurassic Park could definitively be marked as Deinonychus (in universe, anyway) by a single feature: the resonating chamber. Dr. Grant in JP/// was excavating a "Velociraptor" in Montana which possessed the same sort of vocal feature as present in the live animals he encounters, and is even capable of using a cast of this feature to create sounds that the Raptors recognized. In the mid-late 80's, the unorthodox paleo-artist Gregory S. Paul, had tried reclassifying Deinonychus antirrhopus as well as other taxa such as Dromeaosaurus and the then yet to be described Achillobator giganticus all under the genus of "Velociraptor". Gregory Paul is infamous for his nomenclatural "clumping", or the taking of species that may or may not be related to each other evolutionarily and placing them all under the same genus. Paul did this with Sauronitholestes langstoni, Velociraptor mongoliensis, the scant remains that would later be attributed to Achillobator giganticus, and Deinonychus antirrhopus, clumping them all under the genus "Velociraptor", when all three have little to directly do with the others evolutionarily. Sauronitholestes is from Late-Cretaceous Alberta, Velociraptor is from Late-Cretaceous Mongolia/China same with Achillobator, and Deinonychus is from Middle-Cretaceous Montana/Wyoming. That last one is the same location where Dr. Grant is excavating his Raptors, and because it is not known whether or not any other species of dromaeosaur in the fossil record possesses a resonating chamber like that of Grant's Raptor and the InGen Raptors, it must be assumed that these two animals are of the same species.

The TLW Raptors are the males of the JP1 Raptors, as I explained here, and the JP/// Raptors are another version mumber, as I explained here.

Finally, Utahraptor has no inspiration behind Jurassic Park, whatsoever. Quoting Stan Winston: "Later, after we had designed and built the Raptor, there was a discovery of a Raptor skeleton in Utah, which they labeled 'super-slasher'. They had uncovered the largest Velociraptor to date - and it measured five-and-a-half-feet tall, just like ours. So we designed it, we built it, and then they discovered it. That still boggles my mind." (The Winston Effect, p.175) This indicates that because the designs were already created for the raptors when Utahraptor named in 1993, that Deinonychus was the inspiration behind the JP raptors. Furthering this, is that Utahraptor is really too big. The green one is the described specimens height, and even though the head it lower, if raised it'd be roughly the same height as the one in the JPL comparison image. However, I keep finding (mostly on Google) where people say that Utahraptor is the inspiration behind the JP raptors.