|A comparison of deinonychus (above) | and velociraptor (below).
Even though the movie Jurassic Park was ground breaking for its
time, it got a lot of its facts wrong, especially with
velociraptor. Velociraptors were not as large as what was shown
in the movie. They were actually only about 1 meter tall and 2
meters long, most of which was tail. Adults weighed about 9-14
kilograms, looking somewhat like a turkey with a long tail.
Velociraptors were similar to birds in many ways. They had
feathers, hollow bones, and a wishbone. They also built nests.
The more that we learn about these animals the more we see them
as prehistoric birds. Fossil evidence suggests that
velociraptors were solitary creatures and did not hunt in packs,
as portrayed in the film. There is a famous fossil specimen of
velociraptor locked in combat with protoceratops, a small horned
dinosaur about the size of a sheep, but no pack of velociraptors
engaging in this or any other hunt has ever been found.
Velociraptors were also not found in M