Quote from: OmegaZilla on Jun 22, 2011, 10:54:53 AM
In the novel, the Raptors are indeed Deinonychus, but at the time Crichton wrote Jurassic Park Deinonychus was still classified inside the Velociraptor genre (it would get its own genre only later)
Sorry to resurrect an ancient post, but actually Deinonychus was named such upon its discovery. Crichton was trying to use all the most cutting edge research when he wrote Jurassic Park, much of which has since been debunked. For example, the tyrannosaur's movement-based vision was inspired by some of the earliest attempts at dinosaur brain case analysis, which somehow managed to compare the animal's optics to that of an amphibian. Now we know that the rex had one of the most formidable array of senses of any land animal.
In the raptors' case, a small group of palaeontologists were trying to unify the two genera into one, similarly to how Jack Horner has recently with Triceratops and Torosaurus. I assume the skulls were missing for one or both animals, as the enormous difference should really have been immediately apparent...
Anyway, sorry for the small size of some of these.
