Board Thread:Manual of Style/@comment-1187034-20151130020127

Recently, I feel that there should be a page called "North American Velociraptor" which contains information about the film raptors and its appearances in other JP Media such as games, toys, comics, and more. This is because the raptors in the novels, as seen on the Isla Sorna map printed in look different than the ones we see in other media and I feel the film raptors are their own fictional species rather than an actual species that existed in our own world.

Years ago, the articles Velociraptor (novel canon) and Velociraptor (movie canon) were named Velociraptor giganticus and Velociraptor antirrhopus respectively, having been based off what Jurassic Park Legacy believes, which is that the novel raptors were reclassified Achillobator and that the movie raptors were reclassified Deinonychus, since the film raptors were based on Deinonychus and since Michael Crichton used Gregory S. Paul's Predatory Dinosaurs of the World which wrote that the remains of Achillobator were the same as Velociraptor antirrhopus (reclassified Deinonychus) the large raptors in the novels were Achillobator.

In 2012, BastionMonk made a forum post asking whether or not these identifications were true. After discussing this with Jhayk' Sulliy who contributes to JPLegacy, Bastion came to the conclusion that the Velociraptors of the novel and movie canons were unidentifiable.

I found this thread this year and became curious to see if the JP film Velociraptor was, in fact, Deinonychus or an existing species that was just renamed Velociraptor. First off, the JP raptors appear to be their own species in the fossil record of the film canon, as shows that Dr. Grant discovered highly intelligent and vocal Velociraptors with even a skull like seen in the clones of the film canon, so genetic modification can't explain the clones appearance.

I found that there were many ways to restore a Deinonychus. The original restoration looked a bit more like an Allosaurus rather than a raptor. I've seen several reconstuctions that depict it with a more elongated skull and a shorter (that's the opening you see in theropod skulls that are between the nostrils and the eye orbit), which doesn't look like the fossils uncovered at the dig sites in  or  and certainly does not look like the raptor clones. Several paleoartists are baseing their restorations off Scott Harttman's skeletical which I have previously linked:  So due to this dispute, I'd rather not jump to conclusions on JP's Velociraptors being Deinonychus because a new study could be released any day with evidence confirming a different appearance in Deinonychus. Now, one could argue that the films will just use a restoration regardless if new evidence contradicts it for continuity sake and the famous sickle-clawed dinosaurs would still actually be Deinon, which leads me to my next point.

The Holoscape seen in depicts both JP Velociraptor and Deinonychus as  separate dinosaurs. You could argue that the hologram of the raptor wasn't Velociraptor and rather it was Deinon, but why doesn't the icon on the bottom right corner depict the actual Velociraptor instead? Plus, I think it would have been mentioned in JW or one of the viral sites that they were Deinonychus, I mean Henry Wu in the film tells Masrani that the dinosaurs aren't genetically pure which answers why JP's dinosaurs have inaccuracies.

That's my thoughts. As for whether the ones seen in the novel were Achilobator that's another discussion for another time. If you have any thoughts on this matter please leave a comment down below. 