Jurassic Park with raptors, knowing what we know now

If we stick with actual velociraptors, shouldn't they also be turkey-sized instead of about as big as a grown man?

The videomaker said he realizes that velociraptors were only the size of a turkey. The “raptors” in the movie were based on Deinonychus, which would have looked like this.

For r1

8:45

The kitchen scene with feathered raptors

Boo!

They're very unsettling and scary. I wouldn't have been able to handle watching those things in a movie theater as a child. Slick, scaly dinos are much less scary.

Do you know WHY it’s more scary R6?

Terror birds. Genetic memory.

These descendants of raptors preyed upon our small mammalian ancestors in the Cenozoic era. A feathered raptor is virtually identical to a terror bird.

Feathers or not, they're still scary.

Scary!

[Quote] The “raptors” in the movie were based on Deinonychus, which would have looked like this.

Actually these are still too big, even to be Deinonychus. But your point remains correct - there were many species of dromaeosaurs, which are called “raptors” in pop culture because Jurassic park. (Real raptors are birds of prey.) These are a bit too small for Utahraptor but a bit too big for Deinonychus.

Maybe Achillobator is the best fit.

R7 Interesting!

I figured they're scarier because instead of those cute limp-wristed little hands they had in the movies, they now have those big creepy wing-arms, like some kind of satanic Big Bird. And the black feathers look kinda like fur on a bird that big, which makes the raptors seem almost mammalian. So unsettling. 😲

The plumage was probably inspired by the cassowary, which can kill you with a kick.

Actual footage of raptor in abandoned English hospital.

R3 video sent me into a epileptic fit.

[Quote] era. A feathered raptor is virtually identical to a terror bird.

Actually there were a lot of differences.

A Phorusrhacid would have a very stubby tail, a toothless beak, and as they were secondarily flightless, vestigial wings.

A Dromaeosaurid would have a very long and ornately feathered tail, long reptilian jaws with lots of teeth and no beak, and arms with hands that could manipulate things or slash/hold prey.

And of course a ton of skeletal changes.

By the way, the largest dromaeosaurid (raptor) we know of is called Utahraptor. As its name makes clear, it lived in what became the American West. It lived in the early Cretaceous Period, long before T. rex, but it did have to content with a super predator in its environment, called Acrocanthossurus.

Here’s a Utahraptor compared to the largest land carnivore alive today, the polar bear. (Not including crocodiles which hunt mostly in the water.)

And here’s the super predator of early Cretaceous western North America, Acrocanthosaurus. From the late Jurassic period on, super predators arose many times — T. rex was far from the only one.

But what’s unique and interesting about T. rex is, it evolved from the same group of dinosaurs that led to raptors. Tyrannosauroids were more closely related to raptors than they were to other big predators. They were the smartest super predators and had far and a way the most powerful bite.

In fact, T. rex had the most powerful bite of any land animal that ever lived.

Still, I wouldn’t want to run into Acrocanthosaurus in an open field:

R15/R16/R17 I made this for you