June 8, 2012 Prior to the summer of 1993, “raptor” was
synonymous with “bird of prey.” If you said “raptor,” whoever
you were talking to knew you were talking about some kind of
hawk, owl, eagle or other sharp-taloned aerial predator. Then
Jurassic Park came along. Thanks to some taxonomic muddling and
abbreviation, the cunning, sickle-clawed villains of the film’s
third act immediately came to be known as “raptors.”
Velociraptor, Deinonychus and kin had stolen the term for
themselves. Among non-avian dinosaurs, raptor might refer to the
entire group of feathery coelurosaurs with grasping hands and
hyperextendable toe claws—the deinonychosaurs—or to a specific
subset of that group, called dromaeosaurids. It depends on where
you care to draw the line. Just like its use among avian
dinosaurs, the word “raptor” is informal and is a quick way to
draw a conceptual outline of any dinosaur similar to
Velociraptor. But not everyone is happy with how “raptor” has
been co-opted. A few months ago, paleontologist and Tet