The AFU and Urban Legend Archive
Animals
 speilberg raptors and more




Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: derek@nezsdc.icl.co.nz (Derek Tearne)
Subject: Re: Gary Larson, Stephen Spielberg: the connection?
Date: Thu, 8 Sep 94 23:39:29 GMT

In article <34jvtf$16u@crocus.csv.warwick.ac.uk> ierbb@csv.warwick.ac.uk (Robert) writes:

>Along the same lines, I've heard that after the making of 'Jurassic Park',
>a new species of velociraptor was discovered which (unlike all previous
>finds) was very large, similar to the ones depicted in the movie (did anyone
>else think, '_Alien_ ripoff'?) The new species has been named V. spielbergii.
>This is just what I heard, though... Opinions?

No, I didn't think Alien ripoff. I thought the Velociraptors didn't look at all like Sigourney Weaver...

Actually what you heard is an amalgmation and twisting of two real occurences. This will serve as an example of an Urban Legend which is based on fact but which has been changed in retelling.

First, most species of Dromaeosaur (Deinonychus, velociraptor et al) are fairly small.

Crichton thought the idea of a pack of wolf sized fast moving intelligent creatures with lots of teeth was pretty terrifying and picked Velociraptor, which coincodentally had a pretty evocative name.

Speilberg however used the old Hollywood dictum that the main monster should not shorter than the leading lady and made them bigger.

A couple of years before a large Raptor had been found in Utah. Things being what they are they scientists finally got round to writing their paper and naming it at around the time of filming of JP. In a great piece of self-justification/art imitating life hype the cry of 'we just found one like the one in the movie' was raised. Where just is stretching things a little

This Raptor, which may not have been a pack hunter in the Velociraptor/ Deinonychus mould, was provisionally named Utahraptor. I believe this name has now been ratified.

So we have a large raptor 'found' during the filming of JP named Utahraptor.

Now for part two.

Spielberg, being generally a cool guy, gave lots of money to various dinosaur related scientific institutes. By way of thanks one of these decided to name a dinosaur in honour of the movie.

They had a convenient Ankylosaur which needed a name (there are lots of nameless dinosaurs, they get pulled out of the ground faster than they are named). The name they chose was an amalgamation of the names of the cast members all munged into one latinised word.

Unfortunately I appear to have lost the actual name.

Ankylosaurs do not even cloesly resemble raptors, they are herbivorous, walk on all fours and have an armoured back a bit like a giant armadillo from hell. They also have a big club shaped device on the end of the tail.

So there it is.

They did find a big raptor which got caught up in the media hype for the movie, but they found it before filming commenced.

There is a dinosaur named after the cast members of Jurassic Park, but it isn't a raptor. It is however so cute you'd want to pinch it's little cheeks.

ObAnkylosaur: The Ankylosaurus of our youth, the cute one with the club tail, bony plates on the back, sharp spines around it's body, spines outwards from the head, did not exist. It's an mixup of two skeletons from different (although related) groups. Which was a great dissapointment to me when I found out, although I'm happy for the Ankylosaurus that it's been reconstructed correctly.

Even more interesting are the latest revelations about Archaeopteryx. The famous 'first bird', with feathers and wings but could he fly? The concensus has gone "yes","no","he could glide", "he could flap (yay)", "he has the feathers of a flightless bird (bummer)".

Derek "But there must have been an earlier flighted ancestor (yay)" Tearne


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