Velociraptor

The Hollywood Star

Velociraptor was widespread in the deserts of Asia during the Cretaceous period, about 100 million years ago. With its light and athletic build, the small carnivore was ideally adapted to desert life.

Similar to the larger dinosaur Iguanodon, it also had a specially shaped, razor-sharp toe claw with which it stabbed its prey. Usually, a stab into an artery was enough, and then the Velociraptor only had to wait for its prey to bleed out.

With its hollow bones, Velociraptor's skeletal structure resembles that of primitive birds and Archaeopteryx, the link between dinosaurs and birds. Science therefore suspects that Velociraptor is a relative or an ancestor of archeopteryxes and birds.

For decades, the small desert predator Velociraptor led a shadowy existence, known only to palaeontologists. This changed abruptly when some of the animals appeared as computer animations in the 1992 film Jurassic Park. For dramatic reasons, the animals in the film were much more intelligent and almost twice as big as the original, but, as a result, Velociraptor achieved worldwide fame.