The movie Jurassic Park turned the Velociraptor into one of the most well-known names in the dinosaurs. If Velociraptors were still alive today, they would probably think this was pretty cool…except for one problem: The Velociraptors in Jurassic Park were nothing like the real-life version of these dinosaurs!
In fact, the “Velociraptors” in that movie were based off of a totally different dinosaur, the Deinonychus. As for the real Velociraptors, they were about the size of a turkey, and they didn’t weigh much more than a toddler!
Velociraptors were hunters, but unlike the ones in Jurassic Park, the real-life Velociraptors hunted alone. They mostly hunted small dinosaurs, and one really neat fossil found in 1971 shows a Velociraptor attacking a Protoceratops, which was a small, sheep-sized dinosaur.
Velociraptors were covered in feathers, and even though they had really sharp teeth, they used the claws on their back legs as their main attack weapon. While the real-life Velociraptors are very different from the ones they show in Jurassic Park, you sure wouldn’t want to get in a fight with one. You might not like the end result!
Online lessons for kids: dinolingo.com
