Why Are the Velociraptors in Jurassic World So Big?

Every new Jurassic film brings a raft of new questions: Was Tyrannosaurus rex really that visually impaired? Could a Pteranodon really pick up a human with its feet? Why is Bryce Dallas Howard running in heels? One question fans might not have thought to ask, though, was whether or not the velociraptors were the correct size. Turns out, they’re not.

"In real life, velociraptor was a much smaller animal, probably about the size of a really big turkey," says Nathan Smith, associate curator of the Dinosaur Institute at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles County.

Velociraptors were, Smith says, close relatives to birds and were also probably partially covered in feathers—something scientists didn’t even discover until years after Jurassic Park was first released in 1993.

What about the other dinosaurs in the franchise? In the video above, Smith goes through each of the 22 creatures featured in the Jurassic films, including the ones in this weekend's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. How well do they score? Pretty high, actually.

"Jurassic Park and Jurassic World sometimes take a lot of flack from scientists for inaccuracies, like any films do when they’re trying to portray natural history," Smith says. "But in reality, they’ve actually done a really great job of trying to focus on getting the anatomy of the animals right, getting inferences about their behavior, their vocalizations, and other things correct."

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