Question....So when Jurassic Park the book was written the science community had just unearthed a new species that they were calling: Velociraptor Antirrhopus, (Now known as Deinonychus) which is what the "Raptors" in Jurassic Park are. I was cool with the incorrect nomenclature UNTIL, now...so in the game we now have two versions of Deinonychus?
Two versions of Deinonychus? Why?
- Thread starter FrumpyFurling
- Start date
Well, keep in mind that film canon is separate from book canon, for starters. In film canon, the there is a species called Velociraptor that is loosely based on Deinonychus. I say loosely because JP Velociraptors share greater likeness with the larger Utahraptor or Dakotaraptor that were discovered later. Now there is a "second" Deinonychus, which is the Jurassic take on Deinonychus with a few anatomical changes
So, you could say there's two Deinonychus, but I would argue "two dromaeosaurs derived from Deinonychus" is more accurate.
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Here's my understanding;
Book canon-
-Crichton intended the park raptor to be what we now call Deinonychus, but he wrote the story providing a mystery that left the question open for debate.
-Dr Wu, working for InGen, extracts DNA from an amber found in Mongolia. They can't know what they have until they hatch the first clone. Even then, they don't know exactly what they have because specific species might not have left any fossils. So they intended to rely on Paleontologist to look at their clones and tell them what they have based on the fossil record. Velociraptor mogoliensis comes from Mongolia, but what hatched was way too big to be Velociraptor mongoliensis. Was it something new or that didn't happen to be preserved in the fossil record?
-Dr. Grant is a paleontologist and a leading expert on Dromeosauridae, the new [Deinonychus] antirrhopus especially. The Park's raptor is clearly [Deinonychus] antyrrophus, but one thing confuses even him: [Deinonychus] has only been found in the U.S., and none have yet been found in asia at all. Maybe a third species in the Velociraptor family? Or maybe we haven't been looking hard enough in Mongolia? Either way, Grant finds it fascinating.
Movie canon-
-Speilburg was friends with Crichton and wanted to stick to the science side of sci-fi, but by then antirrophus had been reclassfied into a new genus: "Deinonychus." Hollywood happened, and it was decided "Velociraptor" would sell better than "Deinonychus." So the films (and every game) has called them Velociraptors.
-Dr. Grant is introduced somewhere in the western US digging up a large dromeosaur he calls "Velociraptor".
-Dr. Wu and the InGen lab techs seem to know what they're growing, and if they have any doubts they don't share or discuss them with the tour group, and evidently saw no need to consult a leading expert on the animals like Dr. Grant (the Entertainment division simply wanted his endorsement for the brochure).
My own head canon (which I've had for a while): 3 animals
-Deinonychus antirrophus ("Counter-balancing Terrible Claw"): Found in USA. Doom turkey stands about waist/belly-button height.
-Velociraptor mongoliensis ("Mongolian Swift Seizer"): Found in Mongolia and northern China. Psycho chicken stands a little above the knee.
-Velociraptor hammondi ("Hammond's Swift Seizer"): Found in Mongolia and northern China. Movie monster stands about shoulder height, but the films want you to be intimidated by it so you rarely get a good shot where full grown men aren't looking up to them; they're almost always crouched, hunched, or straight up getting pounced on. Also, I don't know who started calling it "hammondi", but I love the name.
Book canon-
-Crichton intended the park raptor to be what we now call Deinonychus, but he wrote the story providing a mystery that left the question open for debate.
-Dr Wu, working for InGen, extracts DNA from an amber found in Mongolia. They can't know what they have until they hatch the first clone. Even then, they don't know exactly what they have because specific species might not have left any fossils. So they intended to rely on Paleontologist to look at their clones and tell them what they have based on the fossil record. Velociraptor mogoliensis comes from Mongolia, but what hatched was way too big to be Velociraptor mongoliensis. Was it something new or that didn't happen to be preserved in the fossil record?
-Dr. Grant is a paleontologist and a leading expert on Dromeosauridae, the new [Deinonychus] antirrhopus especially. The Park's raptor is clearly [Deinonychus] antyrrophus, but one thing confuses even him: [Deinonychus] has only been found in the U.S., and none have yet been found in asia at all. Maybe a third species in the Velociraptor family? Or maybe we haven't been looking hard enough in Mongolia? Either way, Grant finds it fascinating.
Movie canon-
-Speilburg was friends with Crichton and wanted to stick to the science side of sci-fi, but by then antirrophus had been reclassfied into a new genus: "Deinonychus." Hollywood happened, and it was decided "Velociraptor" would sell better than "Deinonychus." So the films (and every game) has called them Velociraptors.
-Dr. Grant is introduced somewhere in the western US digging up a large dromeosaur he calls "Velociraptor".
-Dr. Wu and the InGen lab techs seem to know what they're growing, and if they have any doubts they don't share or discuss them with the tour group, and evidently saw no need to consult a leading expert on the animals like Dr. Grant (the Entertainment division simply wanted his endorsement for the brochure).
My own head canon (which I've had for a while): 3 animals
-Deinonychus antirrophus ("Counter-balancing Terrible Claw"): Found in USA. Doom turkey stands about waist/belly-button height.
-Velociraptor mongoliensis ("Mongolian Swift Seizer"): Found in Mongolia and northern China. Psycho chicken stands a little above the knee.
-Velociraptor hammondi ("Hammond's Swift Seizer"): Found in Mongolia and northern China. Movie monster stands about shoulder height, but the films want you to be intimidated by it so you rarely get a good shot where full grown men aren't looking up to them; they're almost always crouched, hunched, or straight up getting pounced on. Also, I don't know who started calling it "hammondi", but I love the name.
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If we’re going by book canon, then Wu’s Velociraptor was bred from Mongolian amber and was specifically V. mongoliensis, while Dr. Grant’s fossil was V. antirrhopus from North America. Deinonychus antirrhopus was already well known when Crichton wrote the book but he was inspired at the time by the writings of Greg Paul, who was proposing that D. antirrhopus & V. mongoliensis were so similar, they should share a genus (Velociraptor). Criticism about the size of Spielberg’s Velociraptor were answered with a “maybe we’ll find a bigger one,”
To put this in context: a while back there was some academic debate about whether to place Snow Leopards in the genus Pardus with the Leopard. Others assert that it is different enough to require its own genus (Uncia) and they gave their reasons. I believe this is currently the consensus view but here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter to most people because we have a common name for them and that doesn’t change when these definitions get moved around. We don’t have that with dinosaurs except where names like “raptor” enter common use (it was already in use but that’s another story for someone who feels more passionately about it than I).
This sort of thing comes up a lot, with people lumping species into the same genus or splitting them into others. I wouldn’t expect the game developers to keep up with this kind of thing and I wouldn’t want them to avoid introducing species like Tarbosaurus to the game just because some workers call it Tyrannosaurus. It’s a distinct, separate population on a different continent just like Deinonychus is from Velociraptor, so the fact we have them both is great in my book. It’s quicker to introduce a slightly modified existing species like the ornithomimosaurs than give us some real oddballs but they haven’t shied away entirely from the unusual ones either and I’m sure, in time, we’ll get more of the diverse looks like sauropods with tail clubs, duckbilled ornithomimosaurs, anything from the oviraptorosaur family, ...
To put this in context: a while back there was some academic debate about whether to place Snow Leopards in the genus Pardus with the Leopard. Others assert that it is different enough to require its own genus (Uncia) and they gave their reasons. I believe this is currently the consensus view but here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter to most people because we have a common name for them and that doesn’t change when these definitions get moved around. We don’t have that with dinosaurs except where names like “raptor” enter common use (it was already in use but that’s another story for someone who feels more passionately about it than I).
This sort of thing comes up a lot, with people lumping species into the same genus or splitting them into others. I wouldn’t expect the game developers to keep up with this kind of thing and I wouldn’t want them to avoid introducing species like Tarbosaurus to the game just because some workers call it Tyrannosaurus. It’s a distinct, separate population on a different continent just like Deinonychus is from Velociraptor, so the fact we have them both is great in my book. It’s quicker to introduce a slightly modified existing species like the ornithomimosaurs than give us some real oddballs but they haven’t shied away entirely from the unusual ones either and I’m sure, in time, we’ll get more of the diverse looks like sauropods with tail clubs, duckbilled ornithomimosaurs, anything from the oviraptorosaur family, ...
Don't forget the JW movie quote Wu made that if the genome was 100% perfect and not filled with holes that the dino's would look entirely different than they look. When you splice genes of modern animals into the genes of things that have been dead for millions of years the results are unpredictable, like a dinosaur being larger than it really is in the fossil record. In the original book the Pro-compy's had a venomous bite thanks in part due to what ever it was that they used to fill in the gaps in the genetic code. The
Dilophosaurus in the game and movies has a frill and can spit venom again probably from whatever was used by Ingen geneticists to fill in the gaps, something venomous and was able to spit, first thing that comes to mind is the spitting cobra.
All my dinos in the game are 100% genome, so the Wu statement doesn't really mean much in this context. Either way, it's an excuse for why the lore is the way it is other than just admitting the franchise is invested in the IP's status quo. No need to debate the minutia, because it's just filler fluff anyway.
Yes, the dinos don't make all that much sense in the books, movies, games, etc. They're fiction and their primary objective isn't trying to make sense nor be authentic. It'll be alright.
Yes, the dinos don't make all that much sense in the books, movies, games, etc. They're fiction and their primary objective isn't trying to make sense nor be authentic. It'll be alright.
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All my dinos in the game are 100% genome, so the Wu statement doesn't really mean much in this context. Either way, it's an excuse for why the lore is the way it is other than just admitting the franchise is invested in the IP's status quo. No need to debate the minutia, because it's just filler fluff anyway.
Yes, the dinos don't make all that much sense in the books, movies, games, etc. They're fiction and their primary objective isn't trying to make sense nor be authentic. It'll be alright.
Funny part is ARK basically pulled the same with some of it's creatures though they tried to remain scientifically accurate, don't know how true that is anymore seeing as they're owned by a Chinese game publishing company now.
Personally - I wish they had modeled the JWE Deinonychus based on the Raptors of JP3. And Velociraptor should be based on the JP/TLW/JW raptors - which they are.
Yes - original JP concept art based "Velociraptor" on Deinonychus. Michael Crichton actually based the raptors in "Jurassic Park" on the newly discovered "giant" velociraptor species from Mongolia - which was later named Achillobator.
Yes - original JP concept art based "Velociraptor" on Deinonychus. Michael Crichton actually based the raptors in "Jurassic Park" on the newly discovered "giant" velociraptor species from Mongolia - which was later named Achillobator.
Deinonychus is not a "new" genus. In the professional paleo-community antirrhopus has always been Deinonychus since it was described in 1969. No palaeontologist outside of artist Gregory Paul has ever suggested that it was similar enough to V. mongoliensis to warrant synonymy.
Paul is a brilliant artist and competent anatomist, but also an extreme taxonomic lumper, sinking genera and families often based on nothing more than whimsy (ie. without providing a detailed anatomical or cladistic analysis to back up his realignments). Case in point, in the same volume (Predatory Dinosaurs of the World) he sinks the Dromaeosauridae into Archaeopterygidae, sinks Abelisauridae into Megalosauridae, sinks Gallimimus, Struthiomimus and Archaeornithomimus into Ornithomimus, and sinks Gorgosaurus, Alectrosaurus and Nanotyrannus into Albertosaurus.
More recently, he has sunk Guanlong into a dwarf species of Monolophosaurus while Centrosaurus has absorbed Styracosaurus, Coronosaurus, Einiosaurus, Achelousaurus, Pachyrhinosaurus etc. you get the picture.
Kind of a pity that Deinonychus, the animal whose discovery kicked off the Dinosaur Renaissance, has been "hijacked" in popular culture by Velociraptor thanks to one book (PDW).
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You're my new hero now. I understand, that "it's just a game/movie/fiction book" but when its popular enough o become main stream pop culture, it then becomes imperative that the information presented is accurate. If not, then we people who would otherwise not know learn something that is entirely incorrect to begin with. especially now, when people will believe anything on the internet. but they at least to their credit put in the "science" to attempt to cover their deviations.
From my understanding, it was less of being hijacked by it and more of someone deciding that there would be a group of Velociraptors as a subset of dromeosaurs at the time, something that was being batted around at the time but didn't stick beyond a few papers and some books...which Crichton was known to indulge in for a lot of his writing. The name thing from that is what led to a lot of the "raptors" being named.
Deinonychus is one I remember from the "We Sing Dinosaurs" tape I used to have and being one of the heavily used dinosaurs in Dino-Riders...