The perception of Velociraptors and their family, the dromaeosaurids, has dramatically evolved from their initial discovery to the present day, driven by scientific advancements that have transformed them from scaly, lizard-like predators into feathered, bird-like creatures.
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The Velociraptor has changed a lot.
In just the few decades
since Jurassic Park
made it
one of the most popular
dinos in the world.
There have been lots of scientific
discoveries that have changed
how we picture it.
Let's go on
a tour of the velociraptors family
glow up or glow down,
if you like the classic look.
Oh my goodness.
Oh, I forgot about this guy.
This is how velociraptors
went from bipedal
genius lizards
to giant killer chickens.
Hi, I'm Danielle Dufault,
and you're watching Animalogic.
Today
we're going to talk
about velociraptor
and some other dromaeosaurids
and how we perceive them
through time.
When you think of dinosaurs.
One of the first names
that comes to mind is Velociraptor.
Sharp teeth, dagger feet,
and probably a pretty bad attitude
if you're afraid of geese
or even cassowaries,
this was an animal
that would spook you
out of your undergarments.
And yet, despite their current fame,
their whole family,
the Dromaeosauridae
were basically ignored
for decades after their discovery.
So let's take a look
at the whole family
and see how our vision of them
has changed over time,
and how they have been
at the forefront of what
we think of dinosaurs as a whole.
All right, so let's take a peek
at the first fossils of Velociraptor
that were ever found.
Oh, what a beauty.
So I've only ever seen
a cast of this skull.
But this is like
the velociraptor skull
that you probably all imagine.
If you've ever seen
a Velociraptor skull.
Since then, there's
been others collected.
But this is the iconic one.
It's a little surprising
that this didn't make
a bigger splash at the time,
because look at this thing.
It doesn't really look familiar
like any other creature
that we have alive today.
Kind of bird like, kind of lizard.
All dromaeosaurid, baby.
The earliest
fossils of this family
go back to the 1920s.
Veolociraptor mongoliensis
was discovered in...
you guessed it, Mongolia.
It was described by
Henry Fairfield Osborn
in 1924 based on its skull and claws.
He was the same guy who named
the Tyrannosaurus rex
a real dino marketing genius.
At the time,
they just assumed
they were basically small versions
of more
well known theropods
like T-Rex and Allosaurus.
Those first fossils led
to the very first scientific
illustrations of a dromaeosaurid.
Oh, wow.
Okay,
so here's
a beautiful classic
scientific illustration of the skull
and the claw as described by Osborn.
Yeah, this is all the material
that they had at the time.
So it was probably
extremely difficult
to try and imagine
what kind of creature this came from.
You know, today
we have claws
that look similar to this.
There's cat claws, bear claws, even
eagle talons
look a fair bit like this.
But the size and shape of this is
basically unseen until now.
And this skull
if it belong to this skull.
Good luck filling in the blanks.
You know, other dinosaur
claws had been found,
but these are very, very distinctive.
Something only dromaeosaurids have.
is that sickle claw.
And, Oh.
At the time they thought,
well, this is just Dino Scissorhands.
And that made sense at the time.
You don't see a lot of modern animals
with feet daggers,
unless you look at birds.
But we were a few decades from that.
And that's basically
the story of Dromaesourids
and velociraptor until 1969.
Velociraptor didn't
have the rich history
of being a movie star
throughout the 1900s, like T-Rex did.
Really. It was.
It was definitely an underground
kind of star.
But don't worry,
his time is going to come.
In 1969, John Ostrom
described a new dino
called Deinonychus
based on fossils
his team had discovered
five years earlier.
This discovery
led to the first reconstruction
of the dromaesurids
we fell in love with.
Oh, now this,
this is the real deal.
Or at least it was back in 1969.
This illustration is by Robert Barker,
also known as Bob Barker,
who is one of the most famous
paleontologists in America.
So this here is a representation
of Deinonychus,
who was a cousin of Velociraptor
in the same family.
And it looks like they've definitely
filled in a lot of blanks
because we've got everything
from snout to tip of the tail.
You can see instead of being a big,
lumbering lizard down on all fours
and dragging its tail,
this one is up and alert
and sprightly and sprinting.
And that tail is just like
like a rod
that's that's
creating balance for its entire body.
And it is moving fast.
You can see
now we know what that big old
sickle claws doing.
Outstanding.
So I do have to say that
this is pretty typical of the time
as far as dinosaur
interpretations would go, because
instead of being covered in scales,
it's kind of got like,
a lot of like skin folds
and it looks like a naked chicken.
But at least we're
getting closer to chicken,
even see that
it's got a cloaca.
And it's funny, actually,
because the one fossilized cloaca
that we have, it's
not from this group of dinosaurs.
It's a protoceratops.
And that's that's
the only fossilized cloaca,
cloaca we have.
But it actually looks a lot
like what you see here, including
okay,
I'm gonna start talking about its cloaca.
Okay.
I'm done.
Beyond telling
where the claws actually went.
Just the fact
that it looked like a sprinter
put our understanding of them
in overdrive.
Of sprinting takes
a lot of energy
and a high metabolism.
Does that mean that they were
warm blooded
and the posture and claws
were surprisingly birdlike,
so connections were being made.
So in 1993,
the best dinosaur movie to ever be
made was released,
and it had some pretty great
Deinonychus depictions.
Let's have a look.
And by the way,
this is called Carnosaur.
don't show your kids, but
you do need to see it.
Oh my God, that's amazing.
Like, yeah,
he's definitely
not just a guy in a suit.
Did you see how his, his lips
were, like, curling up at the sides?
So this might be a little bit
of a step back.
50 years
to the man in a suit
dinosaur depiction.
But, man, it's got 90s style
all across it.
And for that, I love it.
But also,
how many dinosaur movies
are depicting
Deinonychus specifically?
Props to this movie.
Seriously.
They did their research
and did nothing with it.
The same year,
Steven Spielberg
released Jurassic Park.
Do we really need to say
anything about it?
That movie is simply undeniable.
Crazy to think that that's the precursor
to what we all know and love.
And if you don't,
then why are you watching this video?
Now, who could possibly be
opening this door? Oh my God,
Looking a little less like a man
in a suit over here,
we've got Jurassic Park
now, these raptors, as you all know,
I don't need to tell you.
You already all know this.
That these are called velociraptors.
Despite
clearly being Utahraptor sized.
But when it comes to the movie,
you know where things get
a little changed
and edited and inflated.
So you've got a
Utah Raptor sized Deinonychus called
Velociraptor.
That's just how things go sometimes.
And you can kind of understand
why without even asking.
Velociraptor just sounds cool.
Go Raptors!
I can tell you,
and I know a lot of paleontologists,
because I've been working
in a paleontology lab
for over ten years
that a lot of dinosaur researchers
these days were indeed
inspired by Jurassic Park.
So say what you want
about their inaccuracies.
They've still inspired
an entire generation,
and I bet you own at
least one t shirt.
This look was iconic,
but the
next big development
in paleontology
was just around the corner.
In 1999,
we got the first definitive evidence
of many raptor and dinosaurs
having feathers.
And this does mean Velociraptor too.
So this is Sinusaurpteryx
It's a mouthful,
but it's also a feather full.
We've got this entire body
and it looks like it's just dancing.
But that is kind of
just a classic death pose
for for therapy pods.
Ugh,
it almost looks like
it was alive yesterday
and got run over by a truck.
Beyond showing us that some dinosaurs
had feathers,
this fossil proved
that they weren't
originally intended for flight,
but for insulation or as a display.
That meant that even larger
dinos that couldn't
fly could still have feathers.
And it was concrete proof
that birds are modern day dinosaurs.
And just one year later, in
the year 2000, we got micro raptor.
Now this was a four winged Dromaeosaurid dinosaur.
