Velociraptor Awareness Day!

Albus_Scope

IT'S BEHIND YOU!


[image shows a small, feathered dinosaur on a white background]

I was going to leave the post there for fun, but yes, it is indeed Velociraptor awareness day today, so I thought I'd do a quick lesson all about our second favourite* Jurassic Park dinosaurs! 

Did you know that the velociraptors of old didn't actually look like they do on screen?  The ones we are used to seeing are more like another carnivore called Deinonychus antirrhopus, found during the late Cretaceous period in Asia? 

  An actual Velociraptor would have been much smaller, around 2 ft tall, weighing around 100 pounds and had feathers! So they were slightly larger, much angrier turkeys. Murder turkeys if you will.

They were also solo hunters, which I guess would've made the films a lot less action packed and made Chris Pratt's job a lot more difficult! 


Are you a dino fan? Did you learn anything new today? Know any interesting facts about dinosaurs? And most importantly; What's your favourite dinosaur?  

* Dilophosaurus was obviously the best. On a par with T-rex.

OverlyAnxious

Fun Fact: A T-Rex never saw a Diplodocus.  They lived about 75,000,000 years apart. 

Albus_Scope

An excellent fact there @OverlyAnxious I think people forget just how long dinosaurs were around for, but not all were about at the same time! 

onedayatatime

' Don't go into the long grass!' 😂
Not sure what is my favourite but the flying ones, Quetzalcoatlus, absolutely terrify me!

66Mustang

I used to be obsessed with dinosaurs as a child was really into watching programs about palaeontology and things like that

I love how the dinosaurs evolved as well, some of the plant-eating dinosaurs got so large that they literally would be eating for their entire waking life, even if this meant eating plants while on the move, if they stopped for even a little while they wouldn't be able to maintain their body weight  (80+ tons)...till the "bigger is better" evolution went into reverse because they just got too big to find enough nourishment

I also remember reading all about an island with kind of miniature dinosaurs on it which had a kind of independent ecosystem and the dinos on there didn't need to evolve any bigger because they were all the "right" size relative to each other

For all I know this has probably all been proved nonsense in the 20+ years since I was into dinosaurs because science moves so fast  

66Mustang

OverlyAnxious said:

Fun Fact: A T-Rex never saw a Diplodocus.  They lived about 75,000,000 years apart. 

Didn't know that!!! But I think I remember a similar fact along the lines that humans today lived closer in time to later dinosaurs, than these dinosaurs were to early dinosaurs

JessieJ

I have two on my balcony, well pigeons are related.

My favourites are sauropods, the giant veg eaters. Was into dinosaurs & fossils as a kid & wanted to be a paleontologist, never happened of course. 

I think the biggest animals early humans had to contend with were woolly mammoths. Don't know how ferocious they could be, but many early tools have been found made from them.