Except Spielberg didn't. Crichton did. Spielberg based his raptors on Crichton's description. Crichton described them as 6 feet tall.
The interviews with Spielberg all said he made them larger. Crichton's only real description of them in Jurassic Park was "Pound for pound, a velociraptor was the most rapacious dinosaur that ever lived. Although relatively small--about two hundred pounds, the size of a leopard--velociraptors were quick, intelligent, and vicious, able to attack with sharp jaws, powerful clawed forearms, and the devastating single claw on the foot."
It was Spielberg and Koepp who changed the size, feeling that the real creature wouldn't be menacing enough.
http://jurassicpark.wikia.com/wiki/Utahraptor --
Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!
reply
share
PreachCaleb
9 years ago
No, it was Crichton who made them bigger:
"Tim, this is Professor Malcolm," said a voice cutting in on the intercom. "I have just one question for you about this raptor. How old would you say it was?"
"Older than the baby we saw today," Tim said. "And younger than the big adults in the pen. The adults were six feet tall.
The velociraptor was six feet tall, and powerfully built, although its strong legs and tail were hidden by the tables.
Spielberg kept the size described in the book. Crichton made them six-feet tall.
Let's be bad guys.
reply
share
Decomposed
9 years ago
Crichton did a very good research on dinosaur species etc. He did his job well.
The problem is that in the Velociraptor's case he used a source that was later proved wrong. Here is some interesting information:
The Velociraptors of the first novel aren't misclassified Deinonychus. Instead, they are actually misclassified Achillobator, for the following reasons:
In the novel, Dr. Henry Wu mentions that the amber which the raptors were cloned from came from Mongolia. Therefore, they could not have been Deinonychus, since Deinonychus only lived in North America, not Mongolia.
While writing the novel, Crichton used Gregory S. Paul's book Predatory Dinosaurs of the World as a reference. In Paul's book, he lumped together several dromaeosaurids into the genus Velociraptor, including Deinonychus, which he christened "Velociraptor antirrhopus".
In Paul's book, it is mentioned that the remains of a Velociraptor species slightly larger than V. antirrhopus are known from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia. It is likely that this was the inspiration for Crichton's giant Velociraptors.
At the time, these remains were not yet identified. However, in 1999, it was discovered that they represented a new dinosaur species, which was named Achillobator giganticus.
In the novel, the Velociraptors are described as being 6 feet tall, which is the same height as Achillobator.
At the time that the park was built, Velociraptor mongoliensis was the only sickle-clawed dromaeosaurid known from Mongolia, so when raptors were cloned from Mongolian DNA, the scientists at Jurassic Park probably assumed that they belonged to V. mongoliensis, having absolutely no idea whatsoever that they really belonged to the much larger Achillobator.
Therefore, in conclusion, the scientists at Jurassic Park cloned Achillobators from Mongolian DNA. When they hatched, they assumed that they were Velociraptor mongoliensis. And the reason why Crichton included the Achillobators in the novel is because he had read about them in Paul's book.
http://jurassicpark.wikia.com/wiki/Velociraptor_(novel_canon)
For within each death there is always a new life, a new beginning - Dillon, Alien 3
reply
share
Otkon
9 years ago
the scientists at Jurassic Park probably assumed that they belonged to V. mongoliensis, having absolutely no idea whatsoever that they really belonged to the much larger Achillobator.
Therefore, in conclusion, the scientists at Jurassic Park cloned Achillobators from Mongolian DNA. When they hatched, they assumed that they were Velociraptor mongoliensis.
It doesn't make any sense that they would assume just because the amber came from a Mongolian Cretaceous stratum that it must be some species of Velociraptor! Nor would their analysis of the cloned specimens have stopped once the animals emerged from eggs. In fact, they would have no idea what DNA they would possibly have when extracting it - certainly not down to a similar genus. And it wouldn't be until the animals were conceived and consistently x-rayed as they grew, then dissected at full size, that the scientists would have enough data to compare the skeletal structures to known and named fossilized exemplar. Once the animals grew to three times the size of anything labelled a Velociraptor in the bone records, the scientists didn't chalk up the DNA to being something still undiscovered like a larger cousin?! Hedging the fudged science in the fictional universe on future real-world finds is just bad rationale.
The fact still remains that Grant misidentifies his 6-foot North American find as Velociraptor. We are led to believe he is the world's foremost expert on this exact topic; he would know that neither what he unearthed in the Badlands nor what was chasing them around Isla Nublar could be properly called Veloci-anything.
reply
share