User:AndyJones/Dromaeosaurids in popular culture
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Although knowledge of the Dromaeosauridae (informally, "raptors") as a clade goes back to 1922, for several decades they were familiar mostly to paleontologists as well as serious dinosaur enthusiasts, not really achieving "household name" status as Apatosaurus or Tyrannosaurus rex. This changed in the early 1990s with Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park and its 1993 movie adaptation by Steven Spielberg, which popularized the genus Velociraptor as well as the slang term "raptor". Since then, dromaeosaurids have appeared in numerous dinosaur-related media, such as movies, TV shows, books, and computer/video games. Typically, they are shown as cunning wolf-like pack hunters, a mostly speculative notion supported only by their relatively large braincases as well as a fossil find of several Deinonychus individuals associated with a Tenontosaurus, though the idea that this later find represents evidence of mammal-like pack hunting has since been disputed.
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[edit] In books
- Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton; Velociraptor, along with Tyrannosaurus rex, was one of the major antagonists menacing the human characters. Crichton inaccurately portrayed the dromaeosaurids as six feet tall (as opposed to six feet long), an error which was retained in the movie.
- Raptor Red by paleontologist Robert Bakker; the protagonist is a female Utahraptor named Red in reference to the red stripe running down her snout. Another, smaller raptor species, Deinonychus, was also featured.
[edit] In movies
- Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, which along with the Crichton novel was instrumental in making the dromaeosaurids famous on the same level as classic favorites such as T. rex and Triceratops.
- The Carnosaur movies, regarded by most as attempts to exploit the fame of the more successful Jurassic Park, also made extensive use of raptors.
- Velociraptor, shown as smaller and thinner-snouted than in Jurassic Park, appears in several scenes in Disney's Dinosaur.
- Numerous dromaeosaurids, identified only as "sharpteeth", appear in the Land Before Time movies, starting from the third movie (released shortly after Jurassic Park).
[edit] On television
Dromaeosaurids of some form play a significant role in the following documentaries:
- Utahraptor appeared in the fourth episode of BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs, in which the raptors attacked a herd of Iguanodon. Velociraptor also appeared in a BBC special made by the same crew, In Search of the Giant Claw.
- Dromaeosaurus stars in When Dinosaurs Roamed America. Unlike many previous depictions of dromaesaurids in popular culture, the raptors here have a coating of protofeathers.
- Velociraptor and Pyroraptor are also protagonists in the documentary series Dinosaur Planet.
In addition to documentaries, dromaeosaurids have also made appearances in programs intended to entertain:
- One of the Transformers characters in the computer-animated series Beast Wars was a Velociraptor named Dinobot.
- Dromaeosaurids appear several times in the Land Before Time televised series, including the tyrannosaur Redclaw's two subordinates.
- The central antagonists of the cartoon Extreme Dinosaurs are a trio of Velociraptor named Badrap, Spittor, and Haxx. Although they are very vicious, they are humorously incompetent instead of connivingly intelligent as in other pop-culture portrayals of dromaeosaurids (one character even remarks that they have less independent thinking than other dinosaurs).
[edit] In computer and video games
In many action or FPS games with a dinosaur theme, dromaeosaurids are the most numerous of dinosaurian enemies. Examples of such games include:
- The Turok games
- The Dino Crisis games
- Dino Stalker
- Tomb Raider
- [[Trespasser (game)]]
In addition to these:
- Velociraptor is a huntable dinosaur in two of the Carnivores games; along with Allosaurus and T. rex, it is one of the most dangerous dinosaurs and can attack the player unprovoked. Utahraptor has a similar role in another hunting sim, Primal Prey.
- In some zoo simulation games, such as Zoo Tycoon's "Dinosaur Digs" expansion and Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, Velociraptor can be put on display.
- Velociraptor and Deinonychus both appear as aggressive animals on the maps in Paraworld. The Dustrider tribe can train "raptor handlers" rather early.
