Raptor Attack: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

{{quote|''"Try to imagine yourself [[Everything's Better with Dinosaurs|in the Cretaceous Period.]] You get your first look at this [[Feathered Fiend|"six foot turkey"]] as you enter a clearing. He moves like a bird, lightly, bobbing his head. And you keep still because you think that maybe his visual acuity is based on movement like ''[[Tyrannosaurus Rex|T. rex]]'' - he'll lose you if you don't move. But no, not ''Velociraptor''. You stare at him, and he just stares right back. [[Oh Crap|And that's when the attack comes.]] Not from the front, but from the side, from the other two 'raptors you didn't even know were there. Because ''Velociraptor'''s a [[Zerg Rush|pack hunter]], you see, he uses coordinated attack patterns and he is out in force today. And he slashes at you with this... a six-inch retractable claw, like a razor, on the the middle toe. He doesn't bother to bite your jugular like a lion, say... no no. He slashes at you here... or here... or maybe across the belly, spilling your intestines. The point is...you are alive when they start to eat you."''|'''Dr. Alan Grant''', ''[[Jurassic Park (novel)|Jurassic Park]]''}}

 

* [[Bigger Is Better]] combined with [[Taxonomic Term Confusion]], where works depict "''Velociraptor''" as being more similar to ''Deinonychus'' and sometimes nearing the size of ''Utahraptor'', the [[Trope Maker]] being ''[[Jurassic Park]]'', due to Michael Crichton using paleo artist Gregory Paul's book (which considered ''Deinonychus'' a species of ''Velociraptor'') as a source for his novel. This is typically a result of [[Follow the Leader]] when present in other works.

* Overly flexible or overly stiff tails. Due to their tails being surrounded by ossified tendons, deinonychosaur tails were probably not sinuous and whip-like as shown in ''[[Jurassic Park]]''. At the same time, it is a common meme among paleo artists to draw deinonychosaur tails as being stiff rods almost incapable of bending except at the base. Though true to a degree, fossils of sleeping deinonychosaurs such as ''Mei'' show that their tails were flexible enough to curl around the body.

* [[Rule of Cool|Being capable of taking on impossibly large prey.]] Due to their reputation as pack hunters (which is in itself debatable), deinonychosaurs are popularly shown killing prey much, much larger than themselves with ease. Although we know that some dromaeosaurids potentially preyed on larger prey (for example, one famous fossil preserves a ''Velociraptor'' fighting a ''Protoceratops'', a herbivore that could have been up to twelve times its size in mass), many of these depictions show coyote-sized dromaeosaurids killing prey not just ten times their size, but ''several hundred times'' their size, such as adult hadrosaurs or even sauropods. This paleo-meme may have originated from John Ostrom's description of Deinonychus as a big-game hunter, using its claws to slash at its prey, but it is now known that its claws did not have the sharp lower edges required for this purpose. Instead, the more advanced dromaeosaurs would have used the hooked claws as [http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0028964 piercing implements,] hooking onto moderately sized targets such as juvenile hadrosaurs or small ceratopsians, and skewering their vitals (the ''Velociraptor'' vs. ''Protoceratops'' fossil, for example, shows that the raptor's killing claw is embedded in the ceratopsian's throat, where the jugular would be IRL). Furthermore, many other deinonychosaurs (such as troodonts and basal dromaeosaurids) likely [[Fragile Speedster|specialized in small prey]], not large ones. (Check out how comparatively [http://shartman.deviantart.com/art/Wounding-Tooth-200043202 small] those teeth and claws are in ''Troodon''.)

* [[Feather Fingers|Overly useful hands.]] Many deinonychosaurs had long arms and big hands, and it is therefore tempting to think that they were actually ''used'' like human hands. It is not uncommon to see deinonychosaurs (again, especially ''Troodon'') shown with opposable thumbs, even though the only deinonychosaur that has so far been biomechanically demonstrated to have had opposable thumbs is ''Bambiraptor'', so most deinonychosaurs could only hold objects two-handed (or clutched them towards the chest). In reality, long as their arms were, deinonychosaurs couldn't reach further with their hands than they could with their mouths, and the large feathers known to have been present on the arms and hands of deinonychosaurs would have prevented their use in picking up food from the ground or digging (known traces of digging deinonychosaurs show they dug with their feet, as modern ground birds do). The hand claws were useful as grappling hooks and for holding food that couldn't be eaten in one gulp, but they likely weren't as dexterous as often portrayed.

* ''[[Monsters Resurrected]]'' briefly featured ''Deinonychus'' in one episode (''sans'' feathers).

* ''[[The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs]]'' focused on ''Velociraptor'' in one of the two episodes, discussing how ''Velociraptor'' may have used its killing claw in predation. The fact that dromaeosaurids had feathers is given some attention, though ([[Overly Long Gag|as usual]]) the feathering given to the animated ''Velociraptor'' isn't entirely accurate.

* ''[[Animal Armageddon]]'' featured half-arsed ''Velociraptor'' with the wrong skull shape and a pair of naked ''Troodon'' that take down a subadult hadrosaur.

* ''[[Dinosaur Revolution]]'' heavily averts this trope and the deinonychosaur portrayals are the most accurate in any media so far, with [[Shown Their Work|raptors with clawed wings, male deinonychosaurs sitting on the nests and omnivorous Troodons.]]

 

== Web Originals ==

* [[The Tyrannosaur Chronicles]]: Subverted by a naked ''Deinonychus'' character, who is said to have shaved all her feathers off in order to [[Shout-Out|star in]] ''[[Jurassic Park]]''. The other deinonychosaurs are portrayed with feathers, though mostly not pennaceous ones, probably due to massive work load. More properly feathered deinonychosaurs have been shown to be in the works, but the [[Series Hiatus]] on this project has prevented them from yet making an appearance in the story.

* [[Spec World]]: More or less completely averted, a little bit of [[Science Marches On]] aside,<ref>Most acutely, some of Spec's dromaeosaurids being descended from ''Megaraptor'', now known to have been a carnosaur rather than a giant dromaeosaurid</ref> to the point that the creators decided to kill off nearly all troodonts as a stealth [[Take That]] to humanoid dinosauroids (and indeed, no dinosauroids at all are allowed for the project).

* [http://deinonychosauria.deviantart.com/ This] [[Deviant ART]] group was created specifically to avert this trope.

 

* [[Species Surname|Utahraptor]] from ''[[Dinosaur Comics]]''.

* Yoshi from ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja|Dr McNinja]]'' is a "classic" ''[[Jurassic Park]]'' Velociraptor (unfeathered, Deinonychus-sized). The authors admit that they do care more for [[Rule of Cool]] rather than scientific accuracy.

* Marvin, Libby's [[Cool Pet|pet dinosaur]] from [[Bloody Urban]] is a complete aversion- he's only about as big as a medium-sized dog with feathery tufts on his head and tail.

* Some of the earlier pages in ''[[Dawn of Time]]'' (intentionally) depict ''[[Jurassic Park]]'' style dromaeosaurids. However, a feathered ''Velociraptor'' ''does'' show up in a flashback later on, and the dinosauroids that also feature in one of the story arcs refreshingly avert the "[[Lizard Folk]] dinosauroid" trope.

* Skull and the Eumaniraptor Trio from [[Raptormaniacs]] avert this.

 

== Western Animation ==