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How big are Velociraptors?

AgeGap

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Are they as big as they are portrayed in Jurassic Park? One of my son's books says that they are about the size of a turkey.From what I remember they appeared bigger in the film though I can only compare their size to the children who were trying to escape from them. OTOH I don't really know how big a turkey is, or the kids or velociraptors.
 
Turkeys? Hmmm... from my experiences at the natural history museum, they are about the size of humans.

Whatever their size, they were ace.
 
They are closer to "turkey" than "human" in size.
There was a dinosaur similar to the one in Jurassaic Park, it's called Utahraptor.
 
During the making of the movie, Robert Bakker, a consultant on the movie told Steven Spielberg that velociraptors were actually only half the size that he wanted to use. However, at exactly that time, Dr. James Kirkland and paleontology student Rob Gaston dug up a scaled up model, that was actually a bit bigger than the ones Spielberg used, which were name Utahraptors. Robert Bakker mentioned this in an interview after he viewed the film an the opening in Boulder, Colorado.
 
Thank guys. Once again I should have made Wikipedia my first port of call. I looked at some movie blooper sites but they did not have any info.

OK to flunk math
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Thanks to XKCD http://xkcd.com/135/
 
The animals portrayed in Jurassic Park were Deinoneichus (sp?), not velociraptors (according to paleontologists I know). Supposedly they were about the size portrayed in the movie.
 
They were not Deinonychus, they are smaller than the beast portrayed in the movie. As mentioned above, the closest therapod to the raptors in the movie is Utahraptor. Robert Bakker even mentioned it in the introduction to his novel Raptor Red which is about the life and times of a.... Utahraptor.
 
I believe I recall hearing that many of the dinosaurs portrayed in the film were deliberately changed for impact purposes. Like, the Dilophosaurus apparently doesn't have that Crest and it doesn't spit poison.... and like that, many more examples.
 
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ETA: By the way, searching "Raptor" in XKCD reveals a whole lotta awsome.
 
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Ron_Tomkins said:
I believe I recall hearing that many of the dinosaurs portrayed in the film were deliberately changed for impact purposes. Like, the Dilophosaurus apparently doesn't have that Crest and it doesn't spit poison.... and like that, many more examples.
Click to expand...
They did have crests on their heads. Spitting poison like a modern spitting cobra is a matter of "soft tissue", not bones, so there's no indication that they did and no basis to say they didn't.

I have no problem with that kind of creative gap-filling. The real problem is when they change things that we already actually do know about, especially when it's unnecessary for the drama of the scene. For example, they have a brachiosauroid standing up on its hind legs and tail temporarily. Some scientists have actually suggested that some sauropods could do that, but not that kind of sauropod. The idea is based on how much bigger some sauropods' hind legs are than their front legs, and the movie applied it to a member of a group that's named after how much bigger their front legs are than their hind legs! ("brachio" = "arm") That makes it not only bad physics in defiance of what we know about the animals (hoisting up the heaviest part of the animal on top of the smaller, weaker part) but also bad cinematography, because it didn't change the animal's height or its body's orientation significantly. They apparently wanted the animal to do something dramatic but chose to use an animal on which it would make relatively little difference.
 
Delvo said:
They did have crests on their heads. Spitting poison like a modern spitting cobra is a matter of "soft tissue", not bones, so there's no indication that they did and no basis to say they didn't.

I have no problem with that kind of creative gap-filling. The real problem is when they change things that we already actually do know about, especially when it's unnecessary for the drama of the scene. For example, they have a brachiosauroid standing up on its hind legs and tail temporarily. Some scientists have actually suggested that some sauropods could do that, but not that kind of sauropod. The idea is based on how much bigger some sauropods' hind legs are than their front legs, and the movie applied it to a member of a group that's named after how much bigger their front legs are than their hind legs! ("brachio" = "arm") That makes it not only bad physics in defiance of what we know about the animals (hoisting up the heaviest part of the animal on top of the smaller, weaker part) but also bad cinematography, because it didn't change the animal's height or its body's orientation significantly. They apparently wanted the animal to do something dramatic but chose to use an animal on which it would make relatively little difference.
Click to expand...

Actually, I didn't know that whole thing you just said about Brachiosaurus and I did find it fascinating the first time I saw it. Then again, I was around 12 years old. :)
 
Tiktaalik said:
The animals portrayed in Jurassic Park were Deinoneichus (sp?), not velociraptors (according to paleontologists I know). Supposedly they were about the size portrayed in the movie.
Click to expand...

Like this one?

180px-Deinonychus-antirrhopus_jconway.jpg :) cute!

(from DeinonychusWP)

OK, I'm being *somewhat* facetious. It still has the claw, and its about 60" high at rest like that, and it has a mouth full of sharp teeth. But that is a shot at the modern reconstruction.
 
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