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Velociraptor was a small, agile and slender dinosaur with up-curved skulls and large sickle claws. They had strong jaws with rows of bladed teeth. These, in combination with very big claws on their hands and on one of their toes (the size of these claws could reach up to the length of the teeth on extinct sabertooth tigers) gave these some some impressive weaponry. There is some evidence of how these weapons were used: one of the more spectacular specimens of Velociraptor is a complete, articulated skeleton clutching the skeleton of the dinosaur Protoceratops. The slashing toe claw is where the Protoceratops' throat would have been, and Velociraptors arm is clutched in the herbivore's jaws. The dinosaurs may have been caught in a sandstorm or buried as a sand dune fell on top of them. Recent finds of related dinosaurs from China indicate that Velociraptor bore feathers over most of its body, some of them actually had wings. One of the more unusual features of these animals is that the tendons in the tail were replaced by bone, stiffening the tail. These are among the most birdlike dinosaurs known.
The name Velociraptor is well-known from the movie Jurassic Park, but the dinosaurs portrayed there were actually modelled after a larger relative, Deinonychus. It is from this movie that the velociraptor became popularly known as the raptor. Velociraptor itself was only about the size of a coyote. Although it is possible that the animals hunted in packs (as in the movie) there is no strong fossil evidence to support this idea.
Velociraptor mongoliensis (Osborn, 1924)
Skull length : 249 mm.
Total length : 2.7 m.
Hip height : 0.5 m.
Weight : 15 kilograms