Velociraptor (novel canon)

"The point is, you are alive when they start to eat you." - Dr. Alan Grant

Velociraptor is a genus of dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur from the early cretaceous period which inhabited what is now Mongolia. In the Jurassic Park franchise, Velociraptor bares more similarities to Deinonychus in size and shape, due to Deinonychus having been classified as a type of Velociraptor at the time Michael Crichton wrote the first novel. The raptor's size and shape in the films is extremely exagerated; in fact most paleontologists involved in making the first film didn't want the raptors to be as big as they were portrayed, thinking it would be too unrealistic. In real life, Velociraptor was no bigger than a turkey and bore a more bird-like appearance.



Hunting
Dromaeosaurs may have hunted in packs. The most well known evidence of this are the fossilized remains of a group of Deinonychus eating a Tenontosaurus. Grant's theory is that if you were to stand still in front of a raptor, the raptor would just look back. And then the attack would come, not from the front, but from the side. The other raptors, you wouldn't even know were there.

Jurassic Park and The Lost World
These vicious carnivores stand six feet tall and weigh around 200 pounds when fully grown. They have big green eyes with vertically slit pupils. The first raptors, all females, had dark brown skin. Males appeared in the second film with orange skin and tiger-like stripes.



Subspecies
Some fans have speculated that the raptors seen in JP3 are a different subspecies than those seen in the previous films. This has since been confirmed on the Jurassic Park Legacy website. The raptors of the third film were much more bird like, with feather quills on the back of their heads. They were also brightly colored and had small, red eyes.

Books
In the book the raptors are the first to escape. They had found a hidden place to nest and the number of raptors rose quickly. Before every one on the island left they had to check how many raptors there were. But they "migrated" away before they could and the island was destroyed. Before this, After the Auxilery generator failed, the captive raptors escaped and some of the raptors, after chasing Ellie Sattler and Muldoon found the children in the the Computer room. Grand came to rescue the children, and they ran through the computer room and the nursery and into the Hatching lab. The kids ran into another room and Grant had them lock the door. It was here Grant found a toxic liquid chemical and injected it into some dinosaur eggs, then rolled them in front of the raptors. Two ate them and died of poisoning; the last heard his radio as Sattler was trying to talk with him, but Grant was able to inject the syringe directly in the tail with the toxin. The raptors in the book could also change the color of their skin, much like a like a chameleon.

Depiction in the Films and Description in the Novels
The creature in the films and books were larger than the actual animal, at least triple the size. This was probably an error because, at the time when Crichton was writing Jurassic Park, Deinonychus (a similar dinosaur his velociraptors were based on) was classified as a subspecies of "Velociraptor." In the books, the raptor's made only roaring, snarling and hissing noises, while they are shown to have a kind of "spoken language" in the films. The most noteable difference is the behavior in the books; in the Jurassic Park novel, they cared for their young and only killed an infant that had been raised in the nursery, probavly because it smelled like human scent). In The Lost World novel their behaviour is somewhat different; they don't care for the young or each other, apparently because of "the evil prions."

Popular Culture

 * In the hit Cartoon Network show Codename: Kids Next Door, the Velociraptors are depicted as bully dinosaurs called Noogieraptors.